Emergency Procedures

[SASless]

Once again I am perplexed. Recently the BK Emergency Procedures section was changed in the approved RFM. In the past I was required to regurgitate by rote the drills with special attention to ensuring the i''s were dotted and the t's crossed with no deviation for verbage allowed. At that time....among several things I questioned was the lack of "set collective for OEI flight" or any thing like that....and I was summarily chastized for questioning the wisdom of the MBB staff. The latest change now incorporates that thinking and sets forth in print such modifications to those emergency drills that require such a action. (but not all of them) Now, having been gratified that MBB has signed on to the concept I was advocating , I am in yet another crisis. What do I do for the one procedure that does not include the "set up for OEI" concept....Chief Pilot says regurgitate the words....but in real life reduce the collective and set up for single engine flight. I again question the "say one thing....do another" concept. Where is the happy ground on all this? Do we remind MBB of the difference....do we say one thing...do another...do we write our own procedures locally and get the FAA to approve them ? My outfit has a strict requirement in all procedures....flying...admin...safety....everything we do... what we say we do....we must in fact do....thus I have a management dictate that does not allow for a "good old boy" approach to this.

[heedm]

Know the procedures by rote. If you see a discrepancy send it up to MBB, or whatever the authority is for the RFM (through the chain if there is one).

When push comes to shove, if overtorquing or losing Nr puts you worse off than leaving the collective where it is, then lower collective.

[SASless]

But Heedm....if I do as you say....I am violating at least one of the procedures....how do I draw the line on which one to violate? What if I do what the RFM says....on the one drill that does not allow for OEI first...then overtemp/overtorque.....or if I do the OEI thing...then I run afoul of the Company requirement....if I truthfull write up the incident report....then I leave myself open for challenge on one or the other grounds. If I submit a bogus incident report....I am subject to dismissal for falsifying a report. What would you do in this situation?

[GLSNightPilot]

If your management requires regurgitation of all that verbiage word for word, it's not a company I would want to work for. But if I were forced to do it, what I would do is regurgitate what they want, then when faced with the situation in the cockpit, do whatever I had to do to stay alive and uninjured first, and keep the aircraft in as good condition as possible second, using my emergency authority as captain. If I reduce collective at any point in the flight, emergency or not, that's nobody's business but my own, as Kay Starr et al once sang. In a single-pilot BK, who's going to know, anyway?

[heedm]

Skin Tin Ticket....in that order.

[SASless]

Heedm....I consider the helicopter to be a re-usable container...much like a shipping container for the engines and transmissions. I will try to keep it in good shape up and until it becomes useful in protecting my hide....at which point it becomes disposable. Thus I hold with Skin....Ticket.....Tin.

[NickLappos]

Sasless, here is a tale from early Sikorsky days that shows the first Sikorsky Chief Test pilot Jimmy Viner (Igor's son in law), a friend who died of old age about 5 years ago, having done the first of about anything we now do with helicopters. He was a true pioneer. Jimmy was noted for his pithy profane advice to youngsters, and I think he agreed with you:

He was doing an airspeed bomb flight (we still fly with a torpedo-like calibrated pitot that we trail from a belly mount). He was lifting it off the ground on a still, hot afternoon. At about 50 feet OGE, he started drooping turns and struggling with power (his S-51 was loaded to the gills). The engineer next to him was worried about damaging his precious instrument, and was calling out on the ICS, "Watch out for the bomb! Watch out for the bomb!" again and again as he leaned out of the opened doorway, watching the chain link fence swoop close to the trailing bomb.

Jimmy was so pissed off that, once he got the aircraft squared away in level flight, he turned to the engineer and shouted, "Let me tell you my priorities! First, young man, F**k the bomb, OK? Then, f**k the helicopter, OK? Then, if necessary, F**k YOU!"

I think that is exactly what you said, Sassless!

I wrote the emergency procedures sections of several flight manuals, and my philosophy is simple. You can read it to your chief pilot. It will not get you a cup of coffee, nor a sympathetic smile, but it will piss him off:

If you spout procedures from memory, you miss the point entirely. Pilots are paid to think, they should actually think about this stuff. If we are dumb enough to forget to print that you must lower the collective to OEI power settings, and you don't do it, it is your problem, cause its your skin. FLY the Aircraft.

The pilots who flew that DC-10 in Chicago when the engine dropped off the wing followed the procedures by the book, slowed to Vy, and crashed, as did the 10 crews who flew it in the sim during the investigation. They all bought the farm. The 11th crew sat back and noted that they were climbing at a healthy rate, and that as they slowed down the aileron was creeping toward the limits. They thought about it, stopped slowing to Vy, and just flew out, then landed successfully.

The Air Canada crew that had a potty flush motor overheat followed the checklist, motored on for many minutes before they realized the fire was serious, and burned a dozen or so pax in the process. They also followed the checklist.

The Air Florida crew at DCA that forgot to turn on deice stayed at half throttle during the takeoff roll because they didn't want to go past takeoff EPR. They hit a bridge rather than overboost their engines. During the emergency, they followed their checklist.

Nowhere in any flight manual do I see that you must not park too close to telephone poles, cause they bend the rotor blades. You have to start with some baseline of intelligence to be qualified to read the manual! You have to THINK when you fly, even if it hurts.

I wrote the paragraph in the start of the 76A section 3, where it said that the PIC must determine the appropriate procedures, these the written procedures are only guidelines. I wrote that because I did not want some chief pilot reading the book to a guy who just landed from an emergency.

[Lu Zuckerman]

The pilots who flew that DC-10 in Chicago when the engine dropped off the wing followed the procedures by the book, slowed to Vy, and crashed, as did the 10 crews who flew it in the sim during the investigation. They all bought the farm. The 11th crew sat back and noted that they were climbing at a healthy rate, and that as they slowed down the aileron was creeping toward the limits. They thought about it, stopped slowing to Vy, and just flew out, then landed successfully.

It is my understanding that the engine did not drop off of the wing which is survivable. But instead, it ripped from its’ mountings and rotated forward and upward and in the process collapsed the slats and failed the slat actuation cables and took out all of the hydraulics which is not survivable. The lift differential caused by the collapsed slats induced a rapid rolling motion that was not correctable by the pilots due to the lack of hydraulics. How pilots successfully flew this same profile in the simulator is beyond me.

:confused:

[Winnie]

Lu.
The accident in Chicago would have been survivable if they had not slowed down. The reason they crashed was that the Left wing stalled, because of the damage you mentioned, and would not have happened if they had continued at a higher speed. AA contributing factor apparently was the loss of stickshaker...

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Winnie

According to the reports I read there was a complete loss of hydraulics.

:confused:

[C4]

Sas...
The first engine belongs to the company..
The second engine belongs to ME !!!!!!:D :D :D

[donut king]

Sometimes, pilots just remember HOW to do something instead of thinking WHY they are doing it!!!!

Robots!!

D.K

[Barannfin]

C4 "The first engine belongs to the company..
The second engine belongs to ME !!!!!!"

Hey man thats a good one, ill remember that.:ok:

[heedm]

SASless said, "I consider the helicopter to be a re-usable container...much like a shipping container for the engines and transmissions. I will try to keep it in good shape up and until it becomes useful in protecting my hide....at which point it becomes disposable. Thus I hold with Skin....Ticket.....Tin."

I don't want to sound argumentative because it seems to me that you have the right idea. The way I see it is "Skin..Tin...Ticket"

Skin: Save yourself, your crew, pax, people on ground below you, etc. (not implying any order)

Tin: Do the right thing to prevent damage to the helicopter.

Ticket: Obey every rule, do what your CP says, keep your licence.
___________
Nick, agree with what you said, but sometimes the obvious should be there. Fire in flight with what I'm flying reads "Fight fire...heater off...ventilate...land as soon as possible". During simulated emergencies I've seen people pass many a landing site while they discuss how to fight a simulated fire, then how to ventilate, instead of landing first and doing the rest if there's time. Sure, you could argue that it's the individual who's not thinking rather than the checklist that's wrong, but in some cases it's easy enough to change the checklist. ie "land as soon as possible...time permitting: fight fire..heater off...ventilate"

[Nigel Osborn]

One problem with not fighting a fire first is that things can go ape very quickly. For example some years ago a Wessex Mk 1 was in the dip at a 25 ft hover, when the hydraulic windscreen wiper motor, which is between the co-pilots feet, burst into flames. The pilots told the 2 crew in the back to jump into the sea and then they attempted to fly to the carrier about 5 miles away. At approx 50 knots and 50 feet, the helicpoter blew up killing both pilots. Meanwhile the back seat crew were in their liferafts watching all this happen around them.
In other words even a small harmless looking flame in the wrong place is not good.:mad:

[Scattercat]

I gotta go with Nick on this. We're paid to think too. Sometimes not all scenario's are covered in the checklists. The one law you can't break is the law of physics.