Your words are a bit harsh for someone who wasn't there, don't you think? Well, take it from someone who was there and that has 4000 hours on the Astar, 9000 hours total time and 5 years of heli-ski experience, and yes, it does matter if you are a ski pilot because it is a different flying world when you are heli-skiing for example, you are never more than 3-4 seconds from tree's, on the way up, or, on the way down. I have had a hydraulic belt break once and had a hydraulic pump fail another time and both times the controls were control-able, and both those times there was time to press the collective hydraulic switch, but this time was different, this time it was like the helicopter was being pulled into the mountain beside me. As for hitting the tree's, I was unaware I had hit any trees as there was no indication that I had. I elected to take off again for a bit of a test flight, without passengers, to see if I could identify what was happening to the hydraulics, when just seconds after lift off I wasback on the ground because of a moderate vibration. TSB found 2 hydraulic servo's that failed the extension/retraction speed's, and, they came up with a theory why the hydraulics indeed locked up. One of the servo's drastically failed the test.