The EC130 flight was a charter. And I'm sure that the operator had night VFR weather minimums in their Ops Specs. But there's a problem. It's the same problem that Kobe Bryant's pilot found himself dealing with...the same problem that all VFR helicopter pilots face: What happens when the weather is fine at the departure point and destination, but you run into a band of bad weather when you're past the mid-point of a long flight? Now what!
Years ago in the Gulf of Mexico, I left one of PHI's shore bases in a BO-105 to help with a rig crew-change. A 412 left the base behind me, VFR, giving me enough time to get on and off the deck before they arrived. The rig was waaaaay out, over an hour in the Bolkow. Weather was fine on "the beach." The rig was reporting "clear, blue and 22." Fifteen miles or so from it, I ran into an unforecast (and unforcastable) line of crap weather with a fog bank that I could not get over or under. Taking a deep breath and counting on my two RR-250's to keep running, I got down on the deck and hovered along for several tense minutes until I broke through to clear skies the other side. I radioed the 412 that they'd run into a line of sh*t, and things were bad down to about 10 miles from the rig but that the rig itself was in the clear. Once on the deck, I had a decision to make. I couldn't stay there because there wasn't enough room for me and the 412 and the rig didn't have fuel. Taking another deep breath, I launched and headed north. Hitting the fog bank, I got down on the deck again. Ghostly platforms appeared and slid slowly by on our left and right. My front seat passenger complimented me on knowing the right path through them. But I was just lucky that there weren't any directly in front of us. It was horrible. I promised God that if He got me through that mess, I would never, ever do something so stupid and I would devote my life to rescuing topless dancers from that industry if I had to visit every titty bar in Pensacola and tip them accordingly so they'd have enough money to switch careers and get a real job...like Helicopter Pilot. I broke out of the fog and found my refueling platform. The VFR 412, being able to take round-trip fuel, beat me back to base. All they said was, "Yeaaahhhh, it got pretty bad there for a while." None of us were newbies. The three of us knew what we had done. And we weren't proud of it. Sh*t happens, as they say. I'm sure we weren't the first Gulf of Mexico pilots to ever have that particular kind of sh*t happen, and we certainly were not the last.
The boys in that EC130 obviously should have turned around before they got in too deep. Did they think they could continue to follow the Interstate but were unable? Decisions are tough sometimes. And not all of us make the best ones. Sometimes we screw up badly but live to tell the tale. Sometimes we don't live. I wish it was a perfect world where everything was all cut-and-dried, and you get to a point where you just shrug and go, "Okay folks, can't make it. We're going back to where we took off from!" In theory it's that easy, but in reality it's not.
EDIT: Quick! Someone go repost this on the JH forum so you can all laugh and make fun of a pilot and make yourselves feel good! Oh, and if you do, please get it right: The prayer to God was on the flight back inbound, not the outbound. Yes, there really was a 412 who flew through the same crap I did, both times. And yes, rules were broken. But I always had surface contact and, I don't know about the 412 guys, but I was just hovering along at a speed that would have allowed me to avoid a platform directly in front of me, had there been one. Make fun all you want. Claim that *you* would never do such a stupid thing. We did some dumb sh*t 30 years ago. And, judging by the EC130 accident, some still do today.
Last edited by FH1100 Pilot; 28th Feb 2024 at 22:37.