Self appointed experts telling us where the poor guy went wrong and what he should have done.
Tarman:
As proffessionals. we
should discuss other people's mistakes, so we learn from them and don't make them ourselves. "You don't have to break a leg to know it hurts"
That's why we have accident reports.
Nobody has claimed to be experts or better than anyone, and the easiest thing after an accident, is to say what the poor guy
should have done. But when we discuss it, we become aware. And that saves lives!
Chopjock:
How do you practice a hovering tail rotor failure in a AS350 when you can't get to the throttle lever?
Indeed does any A star pilot practice auto rotations on his own because of this?
On the AS 350 B3 the trottle is on the collective and easily accessible.
But on the older B2's one would have a problem cutting the throttle with a TR failure in hover. One solution would be to lower the collective as soon as possible to stop the yaw-rate, and cushion the best one can, spinning all over the place.
We don't practice that. It's too risky as we don't have a 350-sim. But we just got a 350-sim in Norway that would be a welcome training aid, as you can do certain emergencies exactly as in real-life. (ex fire-drill).
We do practice "stuck pedal" with running landings, and hover-autos, as the instructor cuts the throttle.
I practice autos (power-on of course) on my own all the time to know the gliding-distance and practice to hit clearings. It's good training.
In our company we specialise in sling-load ops, and our workday is mostly at 15m with a sling, with obstacles around the machine. Our worst nightmare is to strike the tail into a tree or something at that altitude, and with rough terrain all around. You don't have the best odds if it happens.
The 350 also has a pretty low tailrotor, so it's easy to get a strike when landing confined. We are pretty tail-rotor focused.