Originally Posted by eltonioni
We'll see, but it's classic Swiss cheese so far.
Sadly yes, and
Originally Posted by Pace
..... the first thing he knew was a very big bang...
Quite and I don't think this will be any kind of instance in which "superior" pilots could have avoided - especially the armchair variety.
But you can't blame people for spectulating over an accident like this - a helicopter about 2mts wide plus the disc hitting a crane jib about 1.2mts wide - in all that air! However, in many tragedies the collision seems to be brought about by an almost unavoidable train of events - a few microseconds in this one would have made all safe.
As for better lighting - I worked on the Canary Wharf Tower from its bed plates to lifting on the pyramidion - I've also seen it's strobes - ( yes, plural as there is one on each corner about half way up aswell as the one on the top ) from an R22 at Elstree Aerodrome even in daylight but not from underneath it at street level in fog on foot.
I can't remember a single installation of aviation lamps that could be turned off by simple switching - they were all hard wired permanently on. Further to that I think that this one in question has two systems - one solar powered on all the time.
The luffing boom of this crane was over 100ft long and was hit about half way along when parked at 85 degrees or so - given that the only time that this kind of crane lowers the boom further than 45 is in it's fitting stage - no position would have avoided this accident - it was caused by BOTH machines not one or more of one than the other.