Gunship my dear, you have
cancelled it's airworthy "Certificate" ... oh and the other one that had DOUBLE engine failure (apparently that never happens as well)...
i'm assured now, you are coming from safety background in aviation
Sorry back to the thread now
The accident area is a wide glacier with just a few obstacles, the cable, the pylons and the gondolas. To bring the concrete to the construction site the helicopter must cross the cables, there is no other way possible.
The route should be devised to bypass the cable car path and if this was impossible - close the lift for +- 15 mins of the task
TC, your words show me your lack of knowledge of such kind of operations. You could'n stop the cable car a few minutes because the helicopters flying without stops. Each rotation needs 4-5 minutes, depending on the route and distance, the helicopter hovers during the fill and the emptying of the kettle. That means they will cross the cable each 2-3 minutes, on one way with a filled kettle, on the other way the kettle is empty. It needs sometimes a few hundred rotations to fill the construction site with the needed amount of concrete. 7h a day and day for day the same. As said this is a beginner job in the Alps and you can imagine now why some of this guys are so really artistic with sling loads. Thats a very very hard and stressing job to the pilot easy to compare with Ag jobs.
Spunk
From what I have seen on TV there are rocks, rocks and nothing but rocks down that valley and just one little tiny cable.
That's exactly the situation in the accident area absolutely not to compare with towns or other "populated areas".
Because the load release happened in cruising flight i believe the experience of the pilot is without concern. A pilot with 850 h should know the right knob in the same way as a 10.000h pilot.
If he have really pressed... nobody knows it at the moment!!!