PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Changes to MoD helicopter low level training rules
Old 5th Oct 2005, 12:35
  #67 (permalink)  
[email protected]
 
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: EGDC
Posts: 10,356
Received 641 Likes on 280 Posts
So, to recap -
1. an unfortunate incident occurs and a woman is thrown from her horse after it is spooked by a helicopter.

2. The coroner (not an aviator or in the military) makes a series of criticisms about MOD LF policy.

3. Instead of being robust in defence of LF, MOD rolls over and initially looks at all sorts of ridiculous ways of making horses more conspicuous to heli crews (including avalanche transmitters which have a range of about 30').

4. Then since none of the ideas are vaguely viable, a system of filing post flight route maps for helicopters is trialled and again proves unworkable and utterly pointless (except as a means to hang a guilty crew in the event of another horse-spooking).

5. So, some bright spark comes up with Helicopter Training Areas (HTAs) around the country where helis can low fly without submitting map traces (there are still lots of horse riders inside the HTAs so this doesn't help the potential conflict). So a heli crew must now get an LFA booking and an HTA booking (and an MFTA booking if in Snowdonia) and none of these will prevent another horse-riding accident.

6. And, because this is so high profile and important, the rules (MIL AIP) are changed and the coordinates of the HTAs promulgated in CALF but in the new section in the AIP, no-one could be bothered to put in a map (not even a simple graphic outline) of the HTAs. The HTA boundaries are all but invisible on the LFC and calfing the SACs makes them almost illegible and unuseable.

What a feat of @rse and a pointless waste of time. I believe the appropriate staffspeak description would be 'nugatory effort'.

Last edited by [email protected]; 5th Oct 2005 at 12:54.
crab@SAAvn.co.uk is offline