Somewhere I have a home video of a NZ registered AS-350B, taken from the car park of a South Island airport.
This "clever" pilot brought the engine back to idle and left the rotors turning then left the cockpit unattended to disembark two pax plus luggage. He walked off, leaving the aircraft running all by itself next to a gate in the car park fence, which he himself left wide open because he was carrying pax luggage. He went through the car park and into a terminal building and didn't return for about 15 TO 20 MINUTES! After about 10 mins we started filming because we couldn't believe what we were seeing.
Some major safety issues here. The aircraft could have destroyed itself by either the rotor making contact under the influence of a gust. If this had occurred, debris would have undoubtedly flown into the adjacent car park.
The engine might have caught fire with no-one to close down the engine. The turning rotors would have subsequently made it very dangerous for someone to re-enter the aircraft to shut it down or for the airport fire services to deal with it.
Or, perhaps more relevantly, a member of the public might have wandered through the open gate and 15 yards later made contact with the tail rotor or even attempted to enter the cockpit.
The pilot, now apparently in a major hurry, returned to his aircraft, jumped straight in, wound it up again, immediately (and I mean immediately!) took off to the hover and rapidly turned left and forwards (his blind side) straight into the path of another helicopter air taxying behind him, causing it to take avoiding action.
I also saw other stupid stuff going on in the hills around Rotorua with pax on board that made my hair stand on end. I wasn't surprised to hear, if these pilots were typical, that in that year, 1995, 10% of all NZ civilian registered helicopters were lost.
I'm sure things are better now, I would like to think that Darwininan theory, if not the authorities, might have sorted some of these pilots out.
TWWW,
Your last comment perhaps shows why there are so many left-handed helicopter pilots, it's easier to operate if you don't need to swap hands to write.
