Thomas coupling
Approximately 180 degrees out of wind, 400 feet AGL, one engine out, at night (possibly goggles) AND THEN the remaining engine fails!
I keep thinking about his background (Chinooks) and his present job (EC135): both NEVER practice total engine failure(s) to the ground.
(Possibly) decades of practical inexperience with EOL's - further aggravated by the spatial predicament he found himself in that evening. RiP.
You're making some assumptions there, and I'm not sure that's helpful. It's many years since I flew chinooks, but certainly we used to fly beep down autos all the way to the ground. I also know of a chinook that successfully completed one for real in an operational theatre.
We'll have to wait and see if there was any plausible reason that a successful auto was not not completed. In the circumstances we might also have to accept that we may just never know precisely what happened to the collective lever, or why. The AAIB will not speculate, nor is it their function to apportion 'blame'. (whatever that means?) They will take the verifiable, factual evidence only as far as it allows. However I'm sure the pilot's nearest and dearest won't thank some recent posters on here for smearing his reputation without (as yet)
any supporting evidence.
One can only hope that these Skygods receive more considered treatment should their relatives ever have to cope with anything similar. Though an element of schadenfreude may then be tempting?