I for one find this incident and thread quite captivating, I am interested to read any comments here before the AAIB do its final report while its fresh in everyones mind
There seems to be certain things going on in helicopters ops over the City of London that a lot of folks didnt seem to know about
I am certainly finding out things just by reading this particular thread
So I am definitely in favour of more comments on this thread as a lot of it is good stuff
The incident reminds me of a time I was sitting in the back of an army helicopter going out into the rainforest in Brunei doing the flying doctor service there
As a qualified helicopter pilot I asked the army if I could go along on one of their flying doctor flights just to watch
I got the permission
We took off early in the morning and on the way to the landing site the cloud cover increased until just like this London incident we were VMC on top but on top of complete cloud cover, no hills or rainforest in sight
We got to the landing site area but there were no holes, thank god I thought as I didnt want the pilot to find one and go for it.
Holes have a tendency to fill in very quickly
Unfortunately after holding for about 30 minutes little holes began to develop and became bigger due to the rising sun and temperature
I am wearing a headset plugged in at the back so I can hear the conversation going on with his crewman (this was single pilot op with a crewman in the back).
Pilot said he could see landing area thru the forming holes, so now I started to feel uneasy I guessed what was coming up
He elected to go for a hole and shortly after entering hole we were quickly engulfed in cloud, I saw only cloud nothing else
We might have been 1500' above the ground and now IMC
The pilot says to his crewman I am in cloud look out for the trees!
At this moment I braced for impact thinking the worst, time goes slowly when in this sort of situation
Luckily we came out of cloud over a river and not a hill, that was a lucky escape
So I remember in the AAIB report the pilot commenting he could land in a field if he had to
Its this kind of go mindedness that usually leads to eventually losing the big picture
So now following this incident I want the AAIB/CAA to look more closely into helicopter operations over London especially single crew operations
I think this incident shows up a lot of shortcomings in the present situation
The airspace rules are complicated and restrictive in London
Please keep comments rolling in whoever you are we can still learn a lot about this particular incident and other folks experiences and knowledge