I think that all pilots and crewman of rescue helicopters should view this video from time to time to remove any sense of lingering complacency. BTW crab, I had previously been informed that neither made it, so I am glad to hear that they did pull through.
Several disturbing points/questions:
1. tecpilot said it was a training mission. To do live winch training with no outs has been erradicated in this new risk management world - and this video is just the example needed to demonstrate why. Rescue personnel place themselves in danger often enough to save lives, why do it in training? It is not too hard to find a small drop/wall with a nice flat base and practice the cliff techniques in safety. This particualr accident was some time ago now, and it provided a catalyst for an examination of our training so as to learn from others. Re examine yours too.
2. tecpilot makes the point that the crew were unaware of the belay situation, thus may have cut the cable instead of fly away. The video shows a winch of a few meters prior to the cut, so I would assume that there was some signal from ground to air indicating the status of the belay prior to winch. Or at least this is one more lesson for the review of procedures: ensure clear and unambiguous signals so that ground and air parties hold the same mental model of the situation. This is simply a human error failing and has happened many times in the past: so it is a reminder to get the right signals, and dont compromise. Perhaps ground to air comms is the way of the future as tecpilot suggests, so we can engineer out this defficiency.
3. It would be intresting to hear the emergency brief, and see how that translated into the actions. For example, they may have pre determined a cut should malfunction occur before coming off their securing point, and a flyaway after. This then under lies the importance of point 2 and the critical nature of shared mental models.
A very sad occurence that should provide yet another motivation for review of winch ops and training. the more discussion on this thread the better!