Originally Posted by
gulliBell
...and if they had an immediate dire and urgent problem with an intent of a forced landing on Blackrock, with 4 crew who would all have access to the outside world on the radio, you'd think one of them wouldn't be able to get a RT call out.
I think all of this will be answered with the recorders. There are very many possibilities, from a "simple" human error cfit, to a loss of tail rotor and fast yawning situation for a number of seconds before impact, restricting rear crew abilities to transmit a radio call-especially if they were unrestrained at the time. Also the large rock and low (decreasing) altitude, a rear crew transmission on fm (antenna on bottom of fuselage?) may not have been picked up if there was only one attempt. Recorders will (hopefully)show what happened in detail.