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Austrian cable car accident - Update

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Austrian cable car accident - Update

Old 8th Sep 2005, 13:27
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Seems to me this could be an really important thread. We, the PPRUNERS are on a very interesting point. We leave the accident level and turning into a principle discussion about helicopter safety. Thats the same situation now in the Alp countries. The public and the helicopter operators are splitted into the same two parties we have here on PPRUNE.
I hope we all understand how important this point is to the whole business. No question we have a risk in the business. On many points we in the helicopters are able the rise the safety factor, but on the other side it is very expensive or impossible to exclude some other risk factors.

It's easy to say close all traffic, all cable cars, all... and saving human lifes.

But, as i wrote before if we want to exclude all risk factors we have to stay in bed. Try to haul the concrete by snowmobile. How many accidents we have with snowmobiles and skier? A lot. OK, close the hole area in front of any construction work.

How many accidents we have with cars? Ok, close the areas around streets.

Don't activate nuclear plants if people could be hurt in case of a technical malfunction. OK, safety area at least 30 miles.

How many people get hurt by helicopters ?
1. direct on turning chopper blades - a lot.
2. direct by downed ships during take off or landing - a lot.

OK, close the area around turning helicopters. Prohibit take off or landing via every people on ground.

I do not dispute that in case of an engine failure or other technical malfunction the pilot will try to bring to ship out of any people on ground. But we have a lot of accidents after all people on ground get hurt. OK, they were standing on the false place.

Why we discuss about the safety of non involved people on ground? Let's talk about our own safety. If the allmighty FAA have safe rules to external loads, why it is possible to fly with singles out of land marks? Why with singles and non IR equipped a/c at night? Why is it possible to make construction work on high voltage pylons sitting on a self constructed board outside a MD 500, rotors turning only a some inches away from the cables?
What if the news chopper chrashed in the US, have killed some people on the ground or fired up the building. No news choppers, sorry, no helicopters above cities?
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Old 8th Sep 2005, 13:29
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The helicopter could have crossed behind the gondola. This would have presented a smaller target at the very least.
@ effortless

A detail perhaps not covered by the media ist that this is not one single gondula traveling the wire up and down. There are 30 to 60 gondolas with a spacing to each other of approx. 20 m.

Crossing between gondulas wpuld not help a bit since this gap of 20 m would prevent nothing. In this case, the payload of concrete hit one gondula, but also two others were ripped from the cable because of the oscillations in the car.

Such a cabe car simply means you have a barrier through a valley which you can only cross during the night. A time where it is nearly impossible to fly in areas where people are on vacation - even worse if this car ends in a village - the barrier through the valley is complete - no passing on either side.

Regards, Bernhard
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Old 8th Sep 2005, 14:04
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The issue isn't single engine helicopters, flying at night, or flying offshore. Those have to be safety issues addressed by the individual operator and regulator. Helicopter accidents are not limited to single engine helicopters, helicopter accidents are not caused solely by engine failures or power loss.

The issue here is flying external loads over the general public, who should deserve a degree of protection provided by the Operator.

I have never suggested that helicopters be restricted from performing this type of work - believe me, it forms the majority of my business. All I have ever suggested that a basic safety requirement of ANY external load operation requires that overflying people, or occupied buildings is a totally unacceptable practice.

If you are trying to suggest that there is no way of hauling a load without overflying people on the ground, then respectfully, I totally disagree with you. It is possible to stage and deliver the load without exposing the public to any risk. If it means flying an extra 5 or even 10 minutes with every pick, then so be it. If it requires that the cable car be shut down for the duration of the lift operations, then that sure seems to be a practical option to me. It is up to the Operator to ensure and INSIST that this occurs. The operator understands andf quantifies the risk, a cable car operator may have no understanding of the risk involved. Ask that same question of a cable car manufacturer or constructor and I can GUARANTEE you what the determination would be. That is because they use helicopters to construct them and have a complete understanding of situations involving helicopters that would influence that decision.

External load operations are a safe and extremely efficient means of performing a large variety of projects - otherwise they would never occur. That doesn't mean that the risk cannot be managed. In fact the rarity of accidents of this type demonstrates specifically, that the risk is effectively managed in these kind of operations.

All the other issues you raise are indeed important safety issues, basic safety issues that concern every operator. The issue here is specifically safe operating practices whilst performing external load operations. It is not the FAA (or any other agency), it is not the customer, it is not the owner of the property involved. It is the responsibility of the operator, who is ultimately responsible for planning and executing a safe operation, that protects everyone outside the operation, from exposure to risk from the act of that operation.
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Old 8th Sep 2005, 18:48
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I confirm there is a risk in flying with sling loads. You mentioned not to fly with sling loads over public areas. OK
But i stated there are allways risks around the helicopter operation. We can try to count now the risk factor of a sling operation. We can count now the risk of any helicopter operation. On which risk factor number you wanna stop the ops?
I'm also on your side, that the laws should build the basics and the operator must try to find the safest way on the special day of ops. In this sadly accident there are no questions about the aerial laws in Austria. It's in law to fly over cable cars with sling loads. This is confirmed by several authorithies. The glacier isn't a dense populated area. It was a "one- in a - million" accident to lost the load and followed by a direct hit of the cable. I hope that this company and other operators find other ways of their ops in dense populated areas. But in this area the ops seems ok to me. If the investigators find out that the pilot have overflown the cars in very low altitude, i would find such flying risky and not to declare. But at the moment investigators doesn't speak from risky flying or low level cruising.
The questions stays "What if the news chopper chrashed in the US, have killed some people on the ground or fired up the building. No news choppers, sorry, no helicopters above cities?"
With overflying this area (over the city) and the people around there was also a specified risk number.
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Old 8th Sep 2005, 22:28
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Devil 1/10th of a second....

I have made some very crude calculations. With my poor math skills this was already a great feat and I ask for forgiveness in advance for errors or complete miscalculations.

Please feel free to correct me! (Especially you Farmer1). I will again stand humble in your mathematical wizardry.

Given parameters:

Height :1000 feet or 300 meters.
Indicated Airspeed : Approximately 50 kts or 92.6 km/h or 25.72 m/s.
Size of gondola (width): 8.25 feet or 2.5 meters.
Weight of bucket
with concrete : 1500 pounds or roughly 750 kilograms.
Time for weight to drop
down from 1000 feet : 7.82 seconds.
Gravity : 9.801m/sec/sec.

Thus:

A helicopter travelling with a underslung load at 50 kts will travel at 25.72 m/s. The gondola is 2.5 meters wide. By my poor calculations the helicopter was still 201 meters away from the cable at 300 meters or 1000 feet when the load accidentally jettisoned. If the load was dropped 1/10 of a second earlier or later it would have most probably missed the gondola.

As stated earlier in the thread:

SHortshaft

Even with the ballistic coefficient of a block of concrete the aircraft would not have even reached the line when the release occurred.

Tecpilot

But to hit a round about 2,5 inches steel cable and a 2,5m wide gondola from 800-1000ft is a feasibility only mathematicians or chair seater could calculate.

Auscan

This was a one in a trillion chance happening. ( I did the math )

Cyclic Hotline

You Cyclic Hotline, is the first one to know how cut throat the industry is. Adding 5 or 10 minutes per leg will probably get you losing the job to someone else who is prepared to take the more direct route. What if there wasn’t a suitable alternate in the mountains where the concrete can be delivered or mixed. Intimately knowing the outlays of ski resorts, you should also know that access is normally a problem and the client wants his cement at 10000 feet to build the new mobile telephone tower.

Nevertheless, I am sorry, but 1/10th of a second risk is hardly any risk at all. A single line feature 2.5 meters wide, less than the width of a dual lane carriage way, is hardly a risk in open terrain where there is masses of available space to do a controlled jettison or an emergency landing or autorotation.

I will bet you that in similar circumstances, you will never hit those cables again, even if you tried everyday for the rest of your remaining flying career.

I have done some of the most dangerous underslung work I think one can do in a Bell 206 Longranger and Bell407’s. That is precision vertical referencing with underslung crews doing live power line maintenance. If anybody knows anything about calculating the risks of underslung work, I think I do.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you that you have to manage the risks, but, if we have to say “what if” for every single time there is the slightest risk we will never get airborne to do any underslung jobs e.g.:

What if I have tail rotor failure at 100’ over the destination building in a CBD.
What if the cable tangles and snaps and shoots into the blades and coil around the pitch change rods and I loose control over my cyclic inputs.
What if I get the load flying into the helicopter’s tail rotor.
What if we use a new inexperienced engineer or loadmaster and do not use mirrors or vertical referencing and we have a hook up.
What if there is no alternate site to do the pickup.
What if I experience wild oscillations and I have to slow down and my fuel is running low.
What if I get vortex ring state during transition to landing or LTE in the high OGE hover.
And then my personal favourite:
What if we have an accidental release exactly in that 1/10th of a second window period and hit the gondolas.

You Cyclic Hotline stated:
I will categorically state that I have NEVER been involved with any external load operation that has overflown people, or occupied premises, intentionally, at any time, nor would I permit it to happen, or be involved with it.
Also:
Dealing with a construction crew and personnel involved with the operation on the ground, is an entirely different matter than flying an external load over the general public.

I can assure you that intentionally and unintentionally, with your hundreds of lifts a day, you probably have overflown people. Construction crews and people involved in your operations are also people.

I don’t understand what the difference is between construction crew, personnel involved on the operation on the ground and the general public. People are people, you have to manage the risks with the people on your operation or on the ground involved in the operation, as you do, as you have to with the people in gondolas.

I think flying at 1000 feet instead of 500 feet was a step in the right direction.

You know, if he was at 500 feet, as required and stated in the regulations you so carefully studied and so wisely pointed out to us imbeciles or even below the allowed height at say 400 feet, he would have missed the gondolas by roughly 74.9 meters and nobody would have said a word, not even you.

In my opinion you have a greater chance of somebody dying in your operations than flying over a gondola at 1000 feet. It sound to me, deducting from what you say, that you see your people on your jobs as expendable, because “they know the risks”. How does that make you a manager of risks?? Your arguments sounds a bit hypocritical to me.

Furthermore, and I can put money on this. If that ski lift was switched off for the duration of the flights, you would have had a mob of people, who paid a lot of money to be there, bitterly complaining to management about the infringement on their skiing time, as it is their right to be on the slopes. They would have been up in arms and would have said themselves, even if in their own lack of wisdom, that there were little or no risk to themselves or others from a helicopter flying overhead at 1000 feet. Even if you had a vote, some people would still have elected to go up in the gondolas.

Self gratification and greed is some of our human downfalls. The owner / operator would also not have wanted to switch off the lifts as he also would not have wanted to lost any revenue during this time and would have approved the flights to keep the customers happy and the business coming in.

And I say this because, I would have been in front of the queue complaining angrily that there was no risks to us in the gondolas and that I wanted to go up to ski.

I would even have argued that they had to keep on flying, while we skied, so that we could get mobile phone communications up and running, as it was in the public and my interest that I could happily continue running my business while keeping mom and the kids happy on the ski slopes.

I dare you to prove me wrong…
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Old 8th Sep 2005, 23:29
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Hi guys,

first, I am Austrian and come from an area about 100 klicks east of this site. My village basically lives of tourism - mainly winter but summer gets better every year. Cable-cars are an essential part of the business.

N5528P:

---"To the accident itself: As already pointed out here by many others, it is impossible to stop the operation of a cable car / tram / etc. etc. just because a chopper is flying somewhere overhead.
This would mean the immediate breakdown of any public transport in an urban area and would make a cable car useless.
There are not only cargo flights conducted throughout the day, but also emergency flights, police flights, military flights, traffic surveillance,.... "---

a) There is no one living up there! This is a tourist attraction so to speak! There is nothing braking down if the damn thing is not working for a couple of days! Okay the operator will cry a while, so what? The main income season is still 3 month away!
What happened will do way more damage to the economy than stopping cable car ops for a couple of days! The media will take care of that!

b) Don't exagerate, as stated before USL is not everyday flying.
Suppose you loose an engine, the pilot still has control over the aircraft (hopefully!) and can maneuver out of harms way ( ....for bystanders anyway) - Once a slingload goes its own way it is out of your control!


---"I cannot imagine that in every ski ressort in the US (for example), the cable cars cease their work just because a chopper is in the area . As a matter if fact, you do not have one cable car - in large ski ressorts you have 30 to 40 of such installations. Do you really believe they always stop because of a chopper? I really doubt that..."---

a) That's why you try to do these jobs off the main season, so you don't do that much economic damage while you close down the area! Also you don't have to shut down all 40 of them, just those that are in the way.....


In this case, the blame goes to the people who allowed this ops over an active skiing area!
I don't blame the operator (Knaus), if he has all the papers, this is his business! If he gets too concerned the competition will take the job. Nor do I blame the pilot, if he doesn't fly someone else will - especially if everything was kosher with the permits. I don't suppose that the cargo was dropped on purpose or by accidental release, but some mechanical/electrical failure.

It is just the general greed, that doesn't allow to clear the area for some time - even off-season.....


3top

Last edited by 3top; 10th Sep 2005 at 01:08.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 03:07
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Recuperator, I do indeed know how cut throat the helicopter business, that is why there needs to be regulatory control of safety issues. That way, there is a level playing field for everyone competing in the marketplace. If you are not permitted to overfly people or property, then everyone has the same limitations. If the customer can't accept the cost of doing the job safely, then I guess he won't get to complete his project.

I agree absolutely about the miniscule possibility of a dropped load taking out a cable car, but it still does not absolve the risk manager from eliminating that possibility while it is in service and carrying members of the public. It is the risk managers duty to ensure that members of the public are not exposed to this risk (of which they are totally unaware).

All the examples of risk which you pose are directly related to the aircraft, pilot and operator. If the job is planned correctly, none of those should endanger the public. The operator and his crew either accept that risk, or find another profession. 3top makes some highly pertinent points including an excellent observation that a helicopter taking controlled emergency action is a very different animal than a dead weight external load dropping out of control from the sky.

Again, I categorically state that at no time have we ever intentionally overflown the general public or own crews. How can I make that statement so confidently? Because, in addition to the requirements of the FAA in the carriage of external loads, I have an entire other set of Federal regulation to obey. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations.

Specifically:
1926.551(a)

Helicopter regulations. Helicopter cranes shall be expected to comply with any applicable regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration.

and

1926.551(i)

Hooking and unhooking loads. When employees are required to perform work under hovering craft, a safe means of access shall be provided for employees to reach the hoist line hook and engage or disengage cargo slings. Employees shall not perform work under hovering craft except when necessary to hook or unhook loads.


Additionally, we have to comply with specific State OSHA or equivalent agency regulations, and any other regulations specific to the type of operation being conducted. Within the above rule, it does not prohibit essential crew from being placed in a certain area of risk in positioning and placing precision loads, eg; tower construction - but that is an assessed, defined and mitigated risk by both the operator and contractor.

The OSHA regulations, like all rules, are an escalating level of regulation, with compliance from the most basic levels of general safety to the specific operation being performed. So;

1926.550(a)(19)

All employees shall be kept clear of loads about to be lifted and of suspended loads.


Do you start to understand why I can so confidently make the statements I make? In addition to basic safety sense, it is the law and I can ensure you it is enforced, observed, obeyed, complied with and is not subject to interpretation by either ourselves, or OSHA.

I assure you and repeat, categorically. I have never been involved in an operation that has intentionally overflown our crewmembers! It is simply not an acceptable practice. I would never consider any of my ground crew as "expendable" (your term), but they accept some degree of risk in the type of operation that we are undertaking. It is our responsibility to ensure the safe working environment for everyone of our crewmembers and we take that responsibility very, very seriously.

Let me explain the difference between anyone directly involved with the operation, and the general public. All crewmembers involved with the helicopter are directly aware of the risks associated with the specific helicopter operation being accomplished.

1926.551(b)

Briefing. Prior to each day's operation a briefing shall be conducted. This briefing shall set forth the plan of operation for the pilot and ground personnel.


The general public has no concept of the risk or understanding of any part of the helicopter operation being accomplished - nor should they. For that reason, it is essential that the operator assume the position of guardian of their safety - by ensuring that every step is taken to protect the public from any risk that helicopter operation places them in.

Furthermore, and I can put money on this. If that ski lift was switched off for the duration of the flights, you would have had a mob of people, who paid a lot of money to be there, bitterly complaining to management about the infringement on their skiing time, as it is their right to be on the slopes. They would have been up in arms and would have said themselves, even if in their own lack of wisdom, that there were little or no risk to themselves or others from a helicopter flying overhead at 1000 feet. Even if you had a vote, some people would still have elected to go up in the gondolas.

Self gratification and greed is some of our human downfalls. The owner / operator would also not have wanted to switch off the lifts as he also would not have wanted to lost any revenue during this time and would have approved the flights to keep the customers happy and the business coming in.

And I say this because, I would have been in front of the queue complaining angrily that there was no risks to us in the gondolas and that I wanted to go up to ski.
Finally. In the prepartory stages of this project the shutting down of the cable-car should have been discussed, and if required, compensated accordingly - it is all in the cost of doing business. The customers would simply have to do without the trip that day. Lots of things get shut down for lots of reasons - its just a part of life. I sincerely doubt that anyone was going up skiing at this time of year.

I would suggest to you that following this terrible accident, the Pilot, Operator, cable car operator, customer and families of those so tragically killed, might be more aligned to the viewpoint that I am presenting, than to the one that transpired. The people killed were an innocent party to what occurred. They paid their money to have a wonderful experience, not get killed in an entirely avoidable accident that was completely beyond their control or comprehension.

I would further suggest to you, that a regulatory framework will result to ensure that something like this never happens again in Austria and quite probably, anwhere in Europe.

I do sympathise with everyone involved. This is a terrrible tragedy.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 06:09
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Cyclic Hotline
That's what i call a "DENSE POPULATED AREA"!

And "NO" the whole downtown wasn't evacuated.

And believe me hundreds of cellular phone transmitters in dense populated areas were placed in this manner. I confess that's not the way i find safe to do such work. I would insist on a twin, a hook system with redundancy and i would at least try to evacuate the working area. But please think about the costs of such strategy. Evacuating a bigger area in such downtown isn't to pay. The ratio between costs of the transmitter, helicopter ops, personal and evacuating isn't acceptable.
And cranes? We have also overturned cranes in cities.

This is a sample picture of the glacier in soelden not far away the accident site including the type of cable car.
.

You can see in dense populated areas we are trying to find an agreement. But one this godforsaken glacier... such a tragedy

Last edited by tecpilot; 9th Sep 2005 at 07:41.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 06:18
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Cyclic Hotline: I couldn't agree with you more. Well done.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 08:24
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And the switch to the emergency load release is situated close to which switch?

Similar case to the YAK which had three fuel shutoff switches next to the three landing light switches - leading to a total flame out on final in hamburg or hannover some years back.

This thread belongs on the main page - these errors can occur on any type.

Greetings from Murphy.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 08:49
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Hi

Speaking as someone who only does very occasional underslung work, I would like to point out that every underslung check ride I have every done (military and civil) has been carried out from an airfield. Pick up barrel of concrete, fly circuit, avoid built up areas, houses, try and cross roads at right angles etc. but without doubt we have potentially overflown members of the public. It is possible that one of these flights might have flown directly over a school bus driving down a country lane!

Is the suggestion, that all future check rides would have to be carried out over some secure part of Salisbury Plain or similar?

TeeS
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 11:33
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No-one has mentioned the general public's view in this:

Who has the God given right to decide whether aerial ops will / will not directly affect the safety of members of the public?

If you, as a prospective passenger read a sign at the entrance to the cable car saying:

The public is advised that during their journey, there is a risk of death or injury from falling debris.

would you and your family climb into that car?

Health and safety was introduced to protect the 'innocent'. In this particular instance, there can be NO excuse for NOT closing the cable car.
IF the project is that important, then the planners should build in a closing period for the cable car company and compensate them for their reduced earnings. If the local community wants this they should pay for it.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 12:31
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tec, I have done plenty of downtown congested area work, just like the picture you have shown. We would indeed shut down the area immediately affected by our operations. That could be as minimal as a single street/parking lot, that allowed us to stage the load and provide a safe emergency diversionary area. There is no necessity to shut down an entire city, simply the limited area affected by our operation.

As we pick the load in the area adjacent to the work site, then the area affected by our operations is minimal at best. That is why we do it that way. As the helicopter enters and exits the area without an external load, there is no restriction on the rest of our operation. We would still have to do it in the early hours of a weekend morning though. This is precisely how we perform these type of missions, and we are typically hauling something much larger than the example posted.

The picture of the glacier is indeed representative of the areas we, again, do lots of work in. Now, the picture obviously presents a limited perspective of the entire area, but from what is visible in that picture, we would stage out of the parking lot, and fly our departures to the right of the lift, and NEVER cross it. Safety is not limited to congested areas. The exact same criteria are considered in every job we undertake.

The point about lifts by cranes is indeed pertinent, as cranes do indeed drop loads and roll over. That is precisely why cranes are not permitted to lift loads over work crews or the public, and why access to work sites specifically excludes the public. Ever seen the general public wandering around a work site next to a crane?

TeeS, the answer to this would be to perform those lifts within the confines of the airfield, or indeed, perform them in some area which limits the possibility of endangering the public.

And TC, we are indeed tasked as the safety advocates for the public, that is our responsibility when performing these missions. It is precisely because we manage the safety aspects of these jobs, that signs such as you suggest are not required. If indeed we do not perform these missions without excluding that risk, then that is precisely the sign that should be required - and the associated liability it implies.

Somehow, I can't see the cable car operator or your insurance company subscribing to that one.
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 14:48
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To summarize this argument:

Side 1:
"What are the odds? You can't eliminate all risk anyway, after all, a meteor could hit the gondola too"

Side 2:
"If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. The more risks you eliminate, the less chance something bad will happen when it does go wrong"

I lean toward Side 2 - being "wrong" in this case simply means you spent more time and money. When Side 1 is wrong, you get this accident (or New Orleans).
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 16:21
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During the afternnon of 8 September a helicopter was flying over central London trailing a large Quantas advertising banner. The aircraft made several circuits during the 20 minutes or so it took me to walk between meetings.

I have no idea of the risk of an accidental detachment, and clearly a falling banner would not represent anything like the threat posed by a concrete laden container. Nevertheless, the consequences of such an event could be serious if it fell on a moving vehicle. The odds of landing on a car, lorry, bus or train must be much higher than the odds of hitting a lone cable car.

Given the comments on this thread about the regulation of carrying loads outside a helicopter and what does or does not constitute good practice can anyone comment on the regulatory position in the UK?
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Old 9th Sep 2005, 16:50
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So that's what it was.
I was too far away to see what was being advertised and it had gone by the time I got back to central London. Splendid idea. I hope we see more.

The regulatory position in the UK?
Too many and too strict in the view of some, but Brits love rules so the position is unlikely to change.


FL

PS: Watch out for bombs on your next visit to the big city. London can be a dangerous place.
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Old 10th Sep 2005, 06:56
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The head of the society of cable car operators in Austria says yesterday: "In my view is the closing of cable cars during transportation flights absolutely unconceivable".
"It's up to the helicopter operator and the authorities, they have to find safe ways".

"Wash my skin, but doesn't make me wet!" I would say.

Construction and service of cable cars in high mountain area are impossible without helicopters and their transportation flights.

And to the banner, yes in my mind it's also an external load operation. No question, such a banner isn't a bomb like the concrete kettle. But a few hundred pounds coming from the sky are allways dangerous.
But i'm shure the flight is allowed and in law, like the tragedy flight in Austria.
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Old 10th Sep 2005, 08:48
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Was the banner tow using the river route? Nonetheless a banner falling is not such a problem as concrete. While driving around Brighton yesterday I took a look at the site that were using cranes. They all had cordoned off public areas which were being carried over.
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Old 10th Sep 2005, 09:05
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The banner may have been over the river part of the time but it was both north and west of Kings Cross as well.
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Old 10th Sep 2005, 10:36
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The estates of those who were injured or died, will now sue whoever stands still long enough, for millions and millions of pounds. It'll probably be spread between the helicopter company, the cable car company and the local authorities.
The wrangling over who pays what amount will take years, but the bottom line is: someone will pay big bucks.

Now for a tiny fraction of this payout, the cable car company could have closed on the days the loadlifting was done and been re-imbursed by the company doing the construction work. And that company could have charged the local authority that same amount to cover their charges.
Some people just don't believe it'll happen to them I guess.

Oh well ... they won't do it again
Thomas coupling is offline  

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