Originally Posted by
Tfor2
So this helicopter professional feels that it is OK for a fixed wing to land at a heliport. Somebody let him know that a fixed wing needs a minimum of about 2,000 feet to land and take off anywhere. He needs to get his head out of his helicopter world.
I think you failed to read between the lines in the post.
Originally Posted by Tfor2
Also, let it be noted that it is reported that the helicopter took off from its base BEHIND the Piper, yet the Piper is reported to have ploughed into the helicopter which appeared in FRONT of it. If this turns out to be true, then the helicopter must have overtaken the Piper from below, and popped up in front of the Piper. That is a scary thought for any fixed wing pilot, especially a VFR amateur taking a kid out for a weekend memory flight.
If you believe what the NTSB recently stated in the latest news conference, what I summarized in my post in Rotorheads and made an observation:
According to the NTSB's latest conference the Piper was cleared to from Teterboro after taking off from 19 to contact Newark (and thus not to enter the VFR corridor).
Newark contacted Teterboro to inform them the Piper had not contacted them, and asked them to contact the Piper and advise them to head 220 and contact Newark.
TEB advised they could not get hold of the Piper and that they had lost radar contact.
From the above it appears the Piper had not planned / (requested to depart TEB airspace) to enter the VFR corridor and that for intents and purposes it should not have been operating there.
Clearly in an emergency situation a pilot may use discretion as to how they deal with the situation, and busting of airspace in the process, which would hopefully explain why the Piper was in the corridor.
Hopefully this should be enough information to those claiming this corridor and or helicopter operations is the reason for this incident to back off and wait for a report, though in reality I doubt this will occur.
If it was a result of an emergency of the Piper then there would have been an incident in the corridor regardless of whether or not it was closed to VFR see and avoid, self announce traffic, just without helicopters getting a bad rap in the process.
An unfortunate incident none-the-less.
From the above we have the facts (from the NTSB) that the Piper should not have been in the corridor - so you can't blame helicopters operating correctly and legally for the incident.
As to what the Piper was doing there we can only speculate at this stage and will need to wait until the NTSB has had the time to perform the appropriate analysis and release a report.
In the mean time please refrain from comments that are derogatory to the people who use this airspace or to the professionals and clients who were impacted by this incident.