Why no autorotation?
There's a vast amount of comment about the fuel pumps and running out of fuel, but that's not ultimately what caused the crash.
The lack of a successful autorotation caused the crash. Had Dave auto'd safely down, we'd probably all be thinking that he was a 'good pair of hand for getting it down safely, but a bit of a ****** for running out of fuel'.
I find it extremely hard to imagine, that in the heightened sense of arousal after the first donk stopped, that he didn't do his damnedest to autorotate. Knowing his UK mil background and how engrained the reaction to low NR has to become, I'm very confident he was perfectly capable, albeit maybe out of practice for 'full downs'. We know from the report that the RRPM dropped below 97% and he managed to get it back once so he was clearly on his game, but why did it decay again so high up that the rotors had completely stopped before it hit the pub roof? For me, this is the real question.......
Last edited by jellycopter; 30th Oct 2015 at 19:42.
Reason: typo