Frisco, Colorado EMS crash July 2015

[The Sultan]

350 crashes on takeoff from hospital in Colorado in daylight. Sounds a lot like the New Mexico UNM incident, but this guy hit the parking lot. Good news there were two survivors, unfortunantly the pilot died. Once again the question has to be asked, why in an obviously survivable crash the 350 burst into flames? It truly is the Pinto of the skies. If it was a car it would have recalled for at least incremental improvements. Why not this aircraft? What AD's have been issued by the regulators to address the situation?

Pilot Dies After Medical Helicopter Crashes in Colorado - NBC News (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pilot-dies-after-medical-helicopter-crashes-colorado-n386536)

The Sultan

[PANews]

You may be buying a brand new 2015 350 [or H125] but you can never buy into the new technology that new designs give you.

Lots of thing can be mitigated but you are not going to get a true modern airframe out of a 1970 design no matter how many tweaks you give it.

We clearly do not know the sequence of events with this latest crash at this early stage but it is likely that as the first one to arrive on scene the pilot was disabled and so that every [manually operated] safety device [like switching off the fuel pumps] may not have happened. If you continue to squirt fuel on a hot wreck it may burn far more easily than if you do not.

In its purest form Health & Safety considerations should preclude you buying anything that was originally designed before 1990. And that is a large number of still in production airframes.

[Gomer Pylot]

The AS350 has an unbaffled rigid plastic fuel tank inside a plastic fuselage. When it hits hard, everything fractures, and fuel sprays everywhere.

[John Eacott]

This video came from the NTSB a year ago, but seems to have slipped under the Rotorheads radar. The footage from 1 minute onward is sobering :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUX1IOT85oM

[rotorspin]

Are the newest H125 now fitted with CRFS (Crash Resistant Fuel Cell) as standard across the globe? Have read that airbus in US has applied the technology, but Europe is still a retrofit?

[megan]

NTSB Probable CauseThe National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was Airbus Helicopters’ dual-hydraulic AS350 B3e helicopter’s (1) preflight hydraulic check, which depleted hydraulic pressure in the tail rotor hydraulic circuit, and (2) lack of salient alerting to the pilot that hydraulic pressure was not restored before takeoff. Such alerting might have cued the pilot to his failure to reset the yaw servo hydraulic switch to its correct position during the preflight hydraulic check, which resulted in a lack of hydraulic boost to the pedal controls, high pedal forces, and a subsequent loss of control after takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to perform a hover check after liftoff, which would have alerted him to the pedal control anomaly at an altitude that could have allowed him to safely land the helicopter. Contributing to the severity of the injuries was the helicopter’s fuel system, which was not crash resistant and facilitated a fuel-fed postcrash fire.

[SASless]

Why....why....why....would one not perform a proper Hover/Handling Check immediately prior to Take Off in a situation such as this?

Why after all these Years is the aircraft still configured so that such a mistake can be made....and no blindingly obvious warning to the Pilot be issued (beyond the Pedals being like Pegs stuck in Concrete perhaps).

Am I being a bit harsh in my thinking that this might as well have been a MurderSuicide case?

[Devil 49]

Why....why....why....would one not perform a proper Hover/Handling Check immediately prior to Take Off in a situation such as this?

Why after all these Years is the aircraft still configured so that such a mistake can be made....and no blindingly obvious warning to the Pilot be issued (beyond the Pedals being like Pegs stuck in Concrete perhaps).

Am I being a bit harsh in my thinking that this might as well have been a MurderSuicide case?

I knew the pilot although I had not seen him in a couple years. A very positive, energetic and diligent individual. My recollection is that he was about to retire. He was very, very active in the union local's executive board in addition to his full-time line pilot position.

In my completely uninformed estimate, fatigue and negative transfer of procedure from his decades in prior Astars were factors. The hydraulic check procedure between single abd dual hydraulic Astar airframes has a couple different procedural points, it would be easy to confuse the importance of following the procedure EXACTLY, and at the time, no visual or audible alert to the critical error.
It id extremely challenging to accept and commit to the possibility of less than optimal outcome to an inflight challenge, which would have been the required action had this pilot detected the issue with a slow lift. Finding yaw control compromised in the hover and landing promptly might have seemed, briefly, a less satisfactory result than the potential of identifying and rectifying it in flight. Denial will kill you dead, dead, dead aviation whether intentional or inadvertent- stretching the glide, imagining there is fuel remaining as the indicator hits zero or trying to avoid a hard landing, crashing flyable aircraft to increase survivability are hard facts.

[SASless]

D49, what was accepted and expected procedures for that Operator re Pre-Take Off (Pre-Liftoff Checks) and a Hover Performance/Controllability Check?

Was there any discussion in the Accident Report about any known circumstances that would have encouraged such a rapid movement into the Hover/Takeoff?

If you put yourself into that poor guy's shoes....what would have been your immediate reaction upon realizing your Yaw Control was grossly limited or non-existent?

When do you reckon he first grasped all was not right with the Yaw Control of the Aircraft?

There was a strong gusty wind from the looks of the windsock and the aircraft was pointed out of Wind.

Did the Operator put out any "Lessons Learned" to other Pilots over this tragedy?

Any changes to the Operations Manual or other procedural changes?

[Unregistered_]

At 22 / 23 seconds, the helicopter begins to rotate while the skids are still on the ground. Interesting the pilot elected to snatch instead of dump. :confused:

[Devil 49]

D49, what was accepted and expected procedures for that Operator re Pre-Take Off (Pre-Liftoff Checks) and a Hover Performance/Controllability Check?

Was there any discussion in the Accident Report about any known circumstances that would have encouraged such a rapid movement into the Hover/Takeoff?

If you put yourself into that poor guy's shoes....what would have been your immediate reaction upon realizing your Yaw Control was grossly limited or non-existent?

When do you reckon he first grasped all was not right with the Yaw Control of the Aircraft?

There was a strong gusty wind from the looks of the windsock and the aircraft was pointed out of Wind.

Did the Operator put out any "Lessons Learned" to other Pilots over this tragedy?

Any changes to the Operations Manual or other procedural changes?

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As unregistered posted, I would guess the TR pedal issue became obvious as the aircraft lifted. As I posted, the temptation for the pilot to attempt to fly out of issues rather than accept the possibility of a hard landing, potential damage to the aircraft is a serious challenge in the moment. It's hard to believe that survival is as much as you can expect, flying out of the problem may be deadly.

"Lessons learned"? This is/was an issue with the company. Accident investigations, resolutions were not widely shared and discussed outside of annual training. The company did attempt to reinforce the proper checklist procedure. I've been retired a couple years (the year after the accident), I don't remember changes in Ops Manuals. The company was moving away from Airbus products.

I can't put myself in his shoes. I've got decades and thousands of hours, probably a couple times more experience, and I have smacked this pig down with yaw control issues. It's traumatic. I did t in the offshore environment, very different than HEMS.


A tangential point, I retired as a direct result of this accident. I knew and respected this pilot, he was a Vietnam era pilot. If he could end this way, I could also, we shared many attitudes and opinions on aviation. I didn't like what I saw after my self critique, so I quit before I killed somebody.

[SASless]

I didn't like what I saw after my self critique, so I quit before I killed somebody.

Hand Salute, Sir!

That takes real courage....to do....and to admit it publicly!

It speaks very well of you both ways.

Most of us towards the end of our Careers have made such self evaluations and far more of us than will admit it reached the same conclusions.

Far more of us should that evaluation on a regular basis between god awful scares we experience.

How many times have we uttered that silent Prayer that goes along the lines of "Lord....get me out of this and I promise never to call upon you again in similar circumstances!".