PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Helicopter down outside Leicester City Football Club
Old 10th Sep 2023, 17:04
  #1253 (permalink)  
Wide Mouth Frog
 
Join Date: Dec 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 30
Likes: 0
Received 2 Likes on 2 Posts
This is an extraordinary failure by the certification authorities and the manufacturer. Attached is a paper from the CAA from 2003 where precisely this gap in certification requirements in was identified, and a rulemaking task initiated in what was JAR at the time. Clearly nothing came of that, or if it did, it was lost (again !) in the transition to EASA. Then it seems that Leonardo's own design department 'forgot' its own experience on the AW139 where it installed the mitigation of the LH thread nut.

But there is an operational issue that seems to have been overlooked, and that is that the helicopter was 75ft (I think) above its planned TDP and commencing a turn before Vmini or Vy. Every pilot who flies a CatA departure profile knows without being told that having everything hanging out at the top of the backup is a very vulnerable position to be in, and is therefore in a hurry to get through that and away to the safety of forward flight. I guess we'll never know what happened here, but I would have been interested to see if the helicopter had been regularly operated this way.

Finally its pure speculation, but the fact that VSKP had the worst degradation of its duplex bearing for the fewest hours of any machines in the fleet might not be unconnected with the nature of this stadium operation with its long drawn out backup at high power.
Attached Files
File Type: pdf
CAPAP2003_01.pdf (1.98 MB, 29 views)
Wide Mouth Frog is offline