.
Herewith an article I recently read highlighting a geo op in Turkey in 1985 which seems to have gone horribly wrong. Written by the 'helicopter coordinator' for GSI (GeoSolutions International) on the project.
The photos are sh*te and without description and for which I apologise.
Sav
* * *
"I was given the Helicopter Coodinator's job because I had worked extensively with helicopters in Indonesia and in the Far East we used them for moving equipment and supplies. This operation was to be a long-line job, like is used in Colorado and places like that. I'd never seen anything quite like it before, not that it would have made any difference.
The contract arrangements were also strange. We were working for ESSO (Exxon), who picked Viking Helicopters out of Montreal, Quebec, and told us to hire them. We paid Viking, and ESSO paid us. But ESSO told us how and what to do with the helicopters. I suppose it was done this way to shelter them from any potential liability.
My job was to arrange for the fuelling, liaise with the Viking people, schedule the day's flying activities, keep up with the billable flying hours, keep up with the radio logs, and spend all day in the field as Loadmaster. This wasn't a very good deal. Eventually, they got Basil Warr, another ex-Far East hand and a Gravity Party Chief to help me. The only good that came out of it was that Basil and I both lost a lot of excess lard that summer. Of course the poor food helped.
Viking helicopters supplied three machines. They were Lamas, which are good for high altitude work. Two of the machines were shipped from the Sudan. The other was leased from Dollar Helicopters Ltd., in Coventry, England, and flown to Turkey. Viking's two machines were clapped out pieces of junk. The HF radios didn't work and they were constantly in the shop. Dollar's machine was fairly new, with working radios, and an engineer who came with it. He was a Frenchman, married to an English woman, who had lived in England for about ten years. He kept his beautiful red ellicoptre in good shape.
In most charter operations there is a chief pilot and a managing pilot. On this job, the manager was the Viking engineer. He was a slick talking Englishman who spent most of his time in the mess tent drinking tea, making the Frenchman do all the work. There was a lot of playing and not a very professional manner among the Viking guys. The chief pilot was a Canadian who came up from Sudan. He was a hot dog. While practicing using the long line, he banged the 55 gallon drum full of jet fuel into the ground a couple of times on the first day. Just as I began to think it was just one of those things that could happen to anybody, he hit a power line while sightseeing down a river. Fortunately, he didn't do much damage, and was able to fly back to camp.
The other original pilot, Mario, was Portuguese. He also came from Sudan. Viking sent in a third pilot, a Japanese named Tony. He was there a few days, and walked around in his Fruit of the Looms because of the heat. After watching his workmates, he told me that they were dangerous and we had better take care. Viking's manager ran him off, but he got the word to GSI in Ankara before he left. It's hard to take a guy seriously who walks around in his drawers , but as it turned out, he was right. By then, I'd been there 7 weeks, and headed for Singapore for 3 weeks of well earned R&R.
While I was enjoying my time off, the first helicopter accident occurred. A new pilot, sent to replace Tony, made a hard landing at a helipad in the mountains, a very hard landing indeed. It was hard enough to destroy the helicopter, though no one was seriously injured--unless you call a broken arm serious. By the time I returned to the crew, the safety brass from ESSO and GSI were there to see what was going on. They mostly bought the BS from Viking's manager and Project Manager, though the ESSO guy gave me a hard time because he didn't like the way Viking was running their operation. With no backup from either GSI or ESSO, I really didn't have much to say about things. I began to see why ESSO had insisted on a GSI Helicopter Coordinator.
The second day back, I was ordered by our Party Chief to stay in camp and run the radio, since the radio operator was out sick. About ten in the morning the helicopter was moving cables and geophones from the back of the line to the front. I couldn't get Mario on the radio. Finally a young turk came on and said there was a problem with the helicopter. He said , "helicopter go boom!" Things got pretty hectic after that. We sent some expats and vehicles out to the staging area where the call came from and found the wreckage of the helicopter and Mario dead.
For reasons known only to Mario--there probably weren't any, he flew into a 110kv high tension line which was overhead the pad where he had been flying in and out of all morning. This line was over 100' above the ground, so it was no problem to miss it. He was likely thinking of something else and forgot about the cable until he struck it with his main rotor. He must have been moving forward fairly fast because he snapped the cable, which was quite thick. It in turn, snapped back on both sides, and caused two grass fires. The wreckage hit the ground not far from where Mario took off. Mario had his head bashed in and was probably killed by the rotor while the helicopter was coming apart. It was a non-survivable crash so we were told.
Our GSI Safety officer just happened to be sober that morning, so he went out with several of the guys who normally worked in camp, and picked up the body. It was packed in ice, and sent to Diyarbakir for whatever the authorities wanted to do with it. They shipped it to Portugal, back to his family. The French helicopter engineer was in a state, so we sent him too. Since his helicopter was finished, his job was too.
It wasn't long until ESSO grounded the remaining helicopter, and converted the operation from a helicopter crew to a mule crew. With no need for a mule coordinator, it was time for me to go."
