Originally Posted by
gulliBell
I've landed on occasion to conjur up a plan when faced with a tricky situation that required a bit of thought, much easier to do the conjuring when sitting safely on the ground. However when I see the daylight photo of that helipad on Blackrock, surrounded by cold water, at night and in bad weather, there is no way I'd contemplate landing on that in those conditions for that reason. It just doesn't make sense to me as an alternative compared with the other option. Which is why I suspect they thought they were somewhere other than where they actually were, for whatever set of reasons. The under the weather transit reason from where they were to where they wanted to go does make operational sense, except when you look at it from the angle that they actually hit the rock. So by implication, the fact that the rock was there came as a surprise to them. Of course a serious malfunction at a critical point might explain why they hit a rock that they knew was there.
What he said.
And no point in micro-analysing the call. It's not a scheduled airline flight with hours of planning. It's a SAR flight with a wide range of possibilities.