What a load of toss!! I've flown Navy single and multi crew helicopters. I've "given the pongos a thrill" by low flying as well, I've even come close to a nasty once or twice when alone. The risks I might have accepted once on my own in a single crew helo were several levels lower than those I might have contemplated suggesting with another pilot next to me.. .I flatly do not believe that two military pilots together would blithely fly into fog at low level in that neck of the woods. The last poster should bear in mind that the last time they were seen, they were NOT flying low in fog, they were VMC. Following that, hands up everyone here who can honestly say they have had a computer runaway up or down when flying helicopters. (No FADEC in my day) I have, in both directions, and that was in far more technologically simple a/c than the HC2. There is no time to get the checklist out, with a runaway up, your prime consideration is preventing the whole rotor head going aviating on its own. Runaway down simpler - you generally have no choice but land!
These guys were set up to take the rap for the mistake of assembling so many experts in one aircraft which then crashed. Nothing to do with the crash per se, just the appalling administrative procedure. Bill Wratten was always regarded as a political animal, and look where it's got him now. Now maybe if the pilots had been ethnic minorities, spoilt junior quasi royalty, children of politicians, asylum seekers....... then Tony's lip would already be quivering as he churned out the sympathy, the angst, the Royal Pardon.
Apology.......look at that pig reaching V2.
(and then blamed it all on the previous Government!!)
[ 06 February 2002: Message edited by: Splot1 ]</p>