Police helicopter crashes onto Glasgow pub

[PeteGillies]

PPrune 1/13/14

Hello to my fellow PPrune posters. I am impressed by the number of posts discussing the EC135 fuel system and all that might go wrong with it. I’m sure that the engineers at Airbus Helicopters are reviewing every post and trying their best to understand how Dave might have misread the gauges and/or warning lights and run out of fuel. Or, as Shawn Coyle has implied, the FADECs may be responsible for both engines (donks) to shut down. Me? I have no idea, but I compliment all of you who have put so much thought into why two perfectly good donks chose not to continue their main job of keeping the rotor blades turning.
But everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room. Donks quit. Over-running clutches fail. Drive shafts break. Fuel magically disappears or can’t make its way to where it is needed. Sierra Hotel, as we say on this side of the pond. As long as man designs, makes, maintains and flies helicopters, stuff will happen.
The elephant everyone is ignoring is this: Why weren’t the rotor blades turning when the helicopter hit the roof?
A mechanical failure or lack of fuel creates an emergency, not a crash. What happens following the emergency is normally determined by the pilot’s actions, decisions, skills, experience and training.
So Dave’s engines quit, one at a time or simultaneously. He now had an emergency on his hands. Something appears to have gone wrong shortly thereafter or else he probably would have made some sort of survivable landing. He was highly skilled, knowledgeable, experienced, trained and fully qualified to fly the EC135.
At least one poster mentioned that the training for engine failures in twin-engine helicopters is based on only one engine failing, not both in succession or simultaneously. An interesting thought. Could it be that because simultaneous engine failures supposedly cannot happen, that pilots are not trained for that possibility?
Oh, I just remembered. And I’m sure Dave did, too. Lever down. Evaluate the need for applying aft cyclic to restore the airframe attitude prior to the loss of power. He remembered the attitude when the last donk quit, right? Nighttime over Glasgow. Busy looking at the instrument panel and trying to figure out what it was saying to him. And running through his mind…”This can’t be happening!”
End of story…