RNZAF UH-1H crash
 

How dreadfully sad.
Worried about the expense of staying in a hotel, a decision was made to fly before dawn.
End result of a sequence of many events - a UH-1H crash and three deaths.
Makes you feel for the RNZAF - a group of professionals trying to do their best, but woefully under-resourced and under funded, even with the A109s and NH90s - when they are worried about overnight accommodation costs for their aircrews.

Very sad, yes.

The part about there being no training manuals due to under-resourcing sounds a bit odd, though - what's the story there? Is the report implying that the people who should be managing and producing that stuff are too busy with tasking, or are there other factors in play?

It seems the authorisation process must have been ineffective in this case, too, if the bits about the inadequate training and qualifications of various crew are true.

I worked with Graham Lintott many moons ago and found him to be a good operator with a lot of cred and integrity (as per most of the 3 Sqn people at that det); it seems the organisation he was presiding over at the time of the accident has suffered a funding-induced decline, if that article's telling it properly.

If the situation is as bad as is alluded to, is it just money, or what?

I think you're right about lack of money - probably the root cause.
Have never met Lintott, but those I know speak highly of him.
There's a general perception in NZ that defence is a waste of money, because
the country is so far away it'll never be attacked and Australia is nearby, therefore there's long term lack of investment well below regional peers as a percentage of GDP, which inevitably leads to downgrading of operational capability and cost saving being a primary focus.
Without pointing the finger at anyone - it shows how bad things have become when three young guys die in part because someone was worried about a relatively small hotel bill.
They punch well above their weight with some pretty outdated equipment.

I was told once that the NZDF only really has a DF (Navy, Air Force)
because of the huge area of sea / ocean / fisheries it has to patrol.

Everything else is irrelevant for the reasons you pointed out
although what they do they do well.

I am afraid it is not only New Zealand who has this penny pinching attitude.

Most Air forces are faced with the Bean Counter calling the shots in areas that they are not qualified and so safety takes a back seat. When things go wrong it is hard for a non bean counter like myself, to compare the saving made with the total loss of life and injury.

The armed forces is something the polies like to have but when are tight do not want to help save the situation by making an effort in regard to their own wants.

Australia has just gone through a defence cost saving exercise where we no longer can do the job that is expected. Whilst this situation is on the boil, our PM get another pay rise (the third I believe) but this time is to the tune of $90,000.

This nonsense will only stop when we are involved in a major conflict.

Regards

Col

A lack of resources is one thing, but I guess what I'm getting at is that the article implies (or so it seems) a drop in standards, failures of training and authorisation processes, as well as pressure to launch in adverse conditions, given where the crews were at in terms of training and preparation for what they were being asked to do, to save a few bucks.

As I said, the Kiwi crews I worked with in the past came across as having high personal and professional standards, which doesn't gel with these comments about their system not being up to scratch in terms of maintaining such standards.

From the article:

Newspaper reports can get it pretty wrong, as we all know, so I'm not trying to pontificate about what should or shouldn't be done - just seems that things sound pretty crook if that's how it really is these days.

Herkman - true - in UK as well.
Still have memories of walking into the mess at RAF Valley many years ago, after a flight.
To a civvy oik - it looked spartan and run-down in the extreme, and still remember the guys were munching on girl guide biscuits and drinking tea out of stained white cups.
Had just been up in a small jet which looked brand new and shiny black from the outside, but on climbing up into the office, everything was scratched, bashed, worn, faded and very well used.
People who accuse armed forces of wasting money need to spend a little time with those at the sharp end.

Oh, there certainly is lots of money being wasted in Defense... just not anywhere near "the sharp end"!

Thread ran here shortly after the accident

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/413...-3-killed.html

I have a copy of the official report should any one be interested. Send a PM with your email addy that will accept attachments.

Point taken Green Knight.

Such a terrible accident

I hope commanders in all flying units take note of this. How many times do we need to push the limits of crew duty and beyond to save some trivial amount of money that has to come out of a different bucket.

In 2008 the RAF Air Staff conducted a Capability Health Check which identified, amongst other things, the impact at point of delivery (hangar floor, cockpit, office) of accumulated risk from unconnected and unrelated change programmes - many of which were outwith the control of the RAF. Morover, becasue fo skills dilution in many areas, risk was being taken on areas where risk had already been taken (ie cutting corner on corners that had, err, already been cut, if you get my drift).

The findings of the study correlate very very closely with the RNZAF observations; the tragedy is that it has taken 3 fatalities to highlight impact of accumulated risk.

Official report here (2mb)
http://www.nzdf.mil.nz/downloads/pdf...06_UPDATED.pdf

Really eye opening, lots of failures all the way up the command chain and a history of bad decision making being shown within the Sqn, events covered up or not reported, or only reported later when evidence came to light.
Have a read, its long, around 100 pages but there is a lot of lessons in it.

I find it extraordinary that in deteriorating visibility over the sea, the turn to reverse course was made towards land.

Sad reading indeed, but there are some red herrings in the Newspaper article. The author, David Fisher, is not employed directly by the NZ Herald, but is freelance, and he doesn't know any more about this accident than anyone else who has read the report. He's simply "cherry-picking" that which he considers sensational! He has no aviation connections whatsoever.

The Wellington hotel cost has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anything as operations conducted from Ohakea, which is a mere 90 miles away, have NEVER required such accommodation. The flight in question has been carried out many, many times.

Oxenos,

Although I don't know, it may be that a turn about toward land was initiated in the belief that the landward turn would have offered more visual references for the crews, who at the time hadn't IF aborted. Just a guess.

A sad loss.

Is there no end to the recent crash reports involving un/under-qualified and over-confident helicopter aircrew? Whether it's the Puma in Catterick, the SAR heli in Almeria, the guy at the slate mine in Cumbria or this appalling read (and that list is just off the top of my head), the story doesn't seem to change all that much. For God's sake guys, wise up.

Not being a helicopter pilot or intending to cast blame - can someone explain to me why - when finding oneself inadvertently in IMC, and not sure if you are still below MSA, the immediate procedure is not to slow to as near to stationary, pull collective and climb near vertically to above MSA?
Is it because of the difficulty of maintaining level flight IMC in a rotary wing aircraft; having only flow one once, they're difficult enough to hover VFR.
Why persist in maintaining forward speed in IMC, even at a relatively slow 60 knots?A web search seems to suggest there is a factor called Vmini - instrument flight minimum speed, and also assume that a feeling of `the leans' may be made worse by a rapid deceleration from cruise at say 120 knots to a much slower speed.
Even for special tactics trained military pilots, it must have been nightmarish - down at 200 feet or lower in a wobbly old Huey, Radalt set to 50 feet, in the dark, on NVGs, with State Highway 1 and township lights and big hills on one side, and a huge black hole where the ocean is on the other. And then to go IMC... poor buggers.

Affordable defence spending
 

If we hadn't wasted so much money on various bits of equipment
or on modifying equipment that maybe we should have bought
"off the shelf" maybe we wouldn't be in such a state.

.