Originally Posted by
Robbiee
You seem to be assuming the pilot knew he was in VRS. He may not have, hence the decision to "continue yo the rooftop".
Anyway, the flight was intentionally flown downwind to get the required angle for the photo shoot, so I'm guessing they did their performance calculations.
Thing is though, Robby pilots are generally only shown VRS recovery from an OGE hover, so we don't know what it looks like when we have forward movement, thus the pilot may not have even realized it, until the very end when he went to pull power to land.
The aircraft was next to a building. We see the acceleration in the video, taken at some distance and from above. I find it a stretch that the pilot was unaware that they were in a downward acceleration. In fact, I’d guess that the collective was pulled to check the acceleration and the low RRPM alarm went off. Then the pilot went for the roof to land asap. Not a good decision or IVRS response and pretty much locking in a bleak outcome.
Lot’s of supposition? Yes. But there is plenty of evidence to support that take
in the video, and you say it was a downwind approach. If that is true, then going for the rooftop with a big sink rate was extremely dangerous and perhaps indicative of poor training and certainly poor airmanship. Not trying to be down on the pilot, but they did also kill their passengers.
Perhaps the pilot did performance planning for that shoot and found… what?
WAT chart - check
HOGE power - I sincerely doubt it.
And without the latter, the approach should not have been attempted downwind.
Maybe it is also useful to separate out utility versus other kinds of flying. Moving out of the vortices sideways may be a trick that is up any low level utility pilot’s bag of tricks to catch IVRS. But I doubt it has much application for public transport. And may be a method that invites false confidence and risk-taking by hour-building photoshoots.
If the pilot really was unaware of the high sink rate, then they really should not have been doing what they were doing.
And when it started to go South, just follow the training: lower the collective a little and attitude at the horizon until airspeed is indicated.The escape route forward seemed fine.
Did IVRS in the sim for the first time in many years a while back. The TRE wanted to see more airspeed before recovery, but I saw 35 knots and that was good enough for me. It took several seconds. But surely that’s the point? See it developing and fix it. Apply the basic training and don‘t impede what should be an intuitive response.
As you no doubt know, training for VRS is done into wind on light or no wind days. Doing it downwind with a fair wind component is a different matter altogether. And may result in aircraft and occupants in a smelly heap.