Pitts
But who actually is fundamentally responsible for the points you make - landing area size,b etc? Who is the operator, in this case? Is it the owner, because he's paying the bills? Is there an ops manager or department? Or was that effectively the chief pilot? I suspect the latter.
Maybe no-one ever told the owner the landing take off area was too tight for safe night ops? However from SawMan says - and he seems to have personal knowledge - the owner was forcibly told this. Nevertheless it still comes back to the chief pilot having the strength to put his foot down. Not easy though, with a job and income to protect, I'm sure.
So, one can see a not unlikely cocktail of night, developing fog, a pretty much 0/0 take off from a fairly tight tree surrounded site, a heavy machine for a long trip, a pressurising, demanding, intimidating owner passenger, drifting into a tree on vertical climb out to whack a blade or two, which either fail several seconds later or the pilot desperately attempts a hopeless emergency landing, knowing he's hit something.
Assuming this is not far from the truth, the most important question now is are there other similar owners out there who are exploiting the vulnerability and weaknesses of pilots to put everyone (and the industry) at grave risk? And if so, what can be done to prevent this?
Or is the reality that this situation, in a very small world, so unique that given the major alarm bells from this accident any such behaviour and weaknesses will be being addressed right now and a repeat is extremely unlikely?