Originally Posted by
FH1100 Pilot
I see a lot of criticism of this BSO pilot on social media and YouTube. Everybody simply assumes that he screwed-up by not pulling the good engine off and autorotating into a schoolyard. The internet is chock-full of experts.
But the Big Question...the one we do not yet have the answer...is whether the EC135 pilot knew he was on fire? All he told the Tower was that he'd had an engine failure. Unless the fire had breached the cabin (which I doubt), I'd bet that those people onboard had their eyes focused forward - if there was no fire warning indication, there would have been no reason to look rearward. But would it have mattered? We do know that he was only about a mile away from the Pompano Beach Airport field boundary when he began his turn back - about a minute away at 60 knots. So even if he did know that he was on fire, would a "LAND IMMEDIATELY" situation have made a difference? Just how "immediately" is immediately when you have an airport with fire/rescue a minute away and you're busy dealing with a problem (engine failure)? Had he been at 5,000 feet instead of 500 feet, how "immediately" could he have gotten it on the ground?
Which, to me, brings up a bigger question: Should that pilot have expected that his aircraft would fail so catastrophically and so quickly? How come we're not pointing fingers at Airbus for their plastic, junky airframes?
Being this close to an airport or "safe landing spot" is probably the double edge sword here.
I think we would all try to make it back to an airfield were you have emergency service ready and being only 1 mile out vs landing in highly populated area during midday traffic, even if it was confirmed fire.
But we would also in our heads expect the airframe to withstand fire for 1 or 2 min.