Originally Posted by The Nr Fairy
nervous:
AAIB report
here.
this is a fascinating report to those of us never in the situation.
interesting how the passenger jumped into the water at 20ft and
then the helicopter was turned into the wind, all under autorotation. i was generally taught (i'm obviously not exactly talented) to set up the helicopter into wind in the latter stages of autorotation to lessen any impact and to coordinate the flare and touch(splash)down, but turning in the last 20ft in auto must be challenging (but maybe easy for a top notch flyer). Any reason why the ditching without power should be different?
if the heli had extended fuel tanks, why did it need to wait for favourable tailwinds, rather than just for for unfavourable headwinds to abate?
finally, it is interesting how the pilots "
would not" rather than "
could not" provide fuel details to the investigators. to what extent are pilots under investigation in the UK allowed to withhold information (such as fuel state) from the AAIB? Flying lawyer?