PHI Crash in Louisiana Jan 2009 - 8 Dead, 1 Injured

[Shell Management]

NTSB Preliminary Issued Friday 23rd

I am not able to comment on the accident for various reasons but I will say I am disgusted at the lack of accurate proof reading by the NTSB on a very critical, sensitive and easy to confirm aspect of this fatal accident. After 19 days haste is not an excuse and a caveat that the report may contain errors will not alleviate the disgust that I share with the family and freinds of the deceased.

It again confirms, as IHST's accident analysis has shown, that the NTSB should be ashamed of their lack of attention on rotary wing accidents.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Preliminary Morgan City, LA SIKORSKY S-76C++ N748P Fatal(2) NSCH Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
Preliminary Indiana, PA PIPER PA-28-160 N5212W Fatal(1) Part 91: General Aviation
Preliminary Wilmington, NC CESSNA 550 N815MA Nonfatal Part 91: General Aviation

NTSB Identification: CEN09MA117
Nonscheduled 14 CFR Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
Accident occurred Sunday, January 04, 2009 in Morgan City, LA
Aircraft: SIKORSKY S-76C++, registration: N748P
Injuries: 2 Fatal, 1 Serious, 6 Uninjured.
This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed.
On January 4, 2008, at 1409 Central Standard Time (CST), a Sikorsky S-76C++ helicopter, N748P, registered to and operated by Petroleum Helicopters , Inc.(PHI), as a CFR 49 Part 135 air taxi flight using day visual flight rules (VFR), crashed into marshy terrain approximately 7 minutes after take-off and 12 miles southeast of the departure heliport. Both pilots and six of the seven passengers on board were killed. One person was critically injured. The helicopter departed Lake Palourde Base Heliport, a PHI base (7LS3), in Amelia, Louisiana, en route to the South Timbalier oil platform ST301B to transport workers from two different oil exploration companies. No flight plan was filed with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), nor was one required. A company flight plan was filed with the PHI communications center that provided weather updates and flight following for the helicopter crew.

According to representatives of PHI, the flight was being tracked via Outerlink, a satellite based fleet-tracking system used by the PHI communications center. The departure from 7LS3 was reported at 1402. The track suddenly ended about 7 minutes after departure at 1409. There were no reports of any problems from the flight crew on the PHI radio frequencies or emergency transmissions on any monitored air traffic control frequencies. A search and rescue operation was initiated at 1414 after the US Air Force notified PHI and the United States Coast Guard of a distress signal being transmitted with the unique identifier that is part of the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) signal that transmits the Aircraft registration number and latitude and longitude coordinates. The helicopter wreckage was found shortly thereafter near the location of the loss of the track and transmitted ELT signal location by the U.S. Coast Guard. The wreckage was found partially submerged and exhibited very little main rotor blade damage.

The twin-engine, 14-seat, 2-year-old helicopter was equipped with glass cockpit instrumentation, a combination cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR), an enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS), solid state quick access recorder (SSQAR), and a VXP vibration recorder. The two Turbomeca Ariel turbo shaft engines were equipped with digital engine control units (DECU). All of these devices have been recovered and are being evaluated by the NTSB IIC and the investigative team. Additional electronic components and flight components are scheduled for further detailed examination. The wreckage was recovered to the PHI maintenance facility in Lafayette, Louisiana and secured.

The weather conditions reported at Amelia, Louisiana at 1430 CST were; scattered cloud layers at 1,500 feet and 3,500 feet, a broken cloud layer at 10,000 feet, visibility 10 miles, winds at 160 degrees at 6 knots, temperature of 24 degrees Celsius, and dew point of 19 degrees Celsius.
Index for Jan2009 | Index of months

[rotorbrent]

Fairly entertaining watching everyone give their guess on basically no valid or verified information and act like the actually know something when they do not. The investigation continues, No smoking guns have been found and the actual cause could possibly never be found.

No emergency AD's on any component of the S-76 or systems no changes in any operating or maint procedures and nothing interesting found on any of the other sister ships looked at. It all takes time and knee jerk emotional reactions do nothing to find the cause. Until a actual cause and problem is found then solutions can be proposed, studied and implimented.

This thread looks like a good study in the game of "telephone" for adults

Your all are going to look funny if say it was like the A/C condensor blew up and one pilot kicked the pedals and the other thought they lost the tail rotor and shut down the engines without telling the other pilot and during the confusion no one was flying and did not enter autorotation. See I can come up with a weird story as well.

It would be fairly obvious soon to investigators if something like a gearbox went but the longer it takes the more interesting the plot becomes. The boxes everyone puts thier faith in are not the Holy Grails of accident information that you think they are.

Over 100 experts in every field of aviation accident investigation are working on finding a cause and solution. But in the real world some problems are never solved.

Our hearts and prayers go out to familys that hopefully a cause will be found for thier sake but also to those of us from the first of aircraft circling overhead the accident that afternoon continue to climb into S-76's and thankfully fly them with valid factual information and not a colomigration POH from PPRuNe

[SASless]

Yes....you are quite correct.

I reckon there has not been the first bit of talk or discussion in any of the PHI crew rooms, house trailers, or email exchanges either. Why I would bet you even the Air Log gang never uttered a peep about the event either as they sat around the dinner table.

Yep...this pprune gang really are a bunch of dorks aren't they!

[topendtorque]

Calm down shell man,
The caveat is standard beer, and covers the fact (apart from anything else, even that inital info maybe incorrect) that they are still searching, at least.
Some comfort should be taken from the fact that as well as every one else who has said nothing (quote sasless) neither has NTSB, before enough info, if ever, can be gleaned.

I'm sure they'll be doing more than looking into their tea leaves on this one.
cheers tet

[Carbon Bootprint]

This was the 11th GOM crash in five years. While a bit light on specifics, an article in today's Houston Chronicle summarises current NTSB efforts on offshore helo and EMS operations.

[Phil77]

tet:
my guess is what p**** Shell off (and me too, btw.), is the lack of attention to detail. I mean preliminary or not, initial findings or thorough investigation, a mistake like this shouldn't have happened and indeed questions their efforts in general:

Injuries: 2 Fatal, 1 Serious, 6 Uninjured.

[helimutt]

Rotorbrent, you state:-

No emergency AD's on any component of the S-76 or systems no changes in any operating or maint procedures

So maybe I can ask you why CHC are having all S76 mag plugs pulled every 25 hours for checking after this accident? At least they are where I work, and the engineers wouldn't just do this unless told to by someone. ???

[ramen noodles]

helimutt asked a good question, "So maybe I can ask you why CHC are having all S76 mag plugs pulled every 25 hours for checking after this accident?"

The answer is that if the investigators have no idea what happened, they do something, anything to make things safer.
We are groping for word from inside the closed room where experts try to understand what happened. Anything that comes out is taken as a Sign Of What Happened, but more likely, anything that comes out is more likely the answer to a concerned management that asks, "What can I do to get safer, in the mean time?" Then the next best idea is tried, and so on.

I've seen it a hundred times. The worst case was when a Black Hawk went down, and while the cause was being determined, the generals that ran the show had the stabilator claw switch installed on every Army Hawk. Most of the unwashed thought this confirmed the stab as the cause. Later, a disconnected control rod (due to lack of safety) was found, but the stab has carried this guilt ever since.

Speculation is worse than warm spit, IMHO.

[rotorbrent]

Its all emotional not base on factual information to show you are proactive to the accident ,without any real basis of increased chip plug inspection. For example we do more corrosion inspections and care because of the hot humid conditions. That is a factual response to finding corrosion due to being in the Gulf of Mexico.

My questions is by pulling all the chip plugs have you found anything?

I bet there has been zero increase safey or reliability by doing this and the emotion that your are safer now is just a illusion

You just increased your chances of damaging the plugs by removing and re -installing then so much. Plus extra cycles for the engines to do the leak check and you have no benefit or cause to do all this extra work or inspections and are really increasing you chances for additional issues not reducing them.

And when they find it was some weird electrical relay failure and computer fault or they were struck by lighting? are you going to still pull the chip plugs ? Or are you going to apply correct maint procedures to prevent this again.

There is nothing wrong with being proactive. But shooting in the Dark on Zero comfirmed information would not be good safety, or management pratice.

And once again there have been no smoking guns found and no emergency AD's. So I can choose to go out strap in and do my job to the best of my knowledge and keep studying in my profession or I can get wrapped up in pointless grade school rumors and be a chicken little and feed the rumor mill or choice to be a pro. If they find a accident cause I will adjust my actions as the facts are discovered. Not react to every rumor until then.

There are more workers killed driving to and from offshore work bases than at work. Equipment drops and falls second, boat accidents third and helicopters are way down the list.

[helimutt]

I saw that memo this morning just before going flying. It said the 76 was a 'low inertia' head. R22's do teach you something useful then, although I did manage to fall out of the sky in the 76 sim at FSI when I had a double eng failure.

Funny how eng chip warnings could appear only minutes after the last mag plug check. The thing is, as an ex engineer, I know fine well how quickly a high speed rotating part can fail with little or no warning at all. Been a bit close to a few of them over the years!

High speed rotating machinery stores huge amounts of kinetic energy. When one or more rotating components burst, that energy is released. For example, a rotor weighing 272 kg (600 lbs), having a diameter of 76 cm (30 in) and spinning at 14,000 rpm has an energy equivalent of 2.1 x 107 Joules. This is equivalent to the power of some bombs. Even small rotors spinning at high speed can cause catastrophic damage during a burst.

[topendtorque]

Duly noted Phil77, surely the data on the electronic storages will not take too long to interrogate?\tet

[rotorbrent]

Data is based on the assumption that power is supplied to the components. The Orange Boxes are not the "Holy Grail" that the press and the safety guys make them out to be.

For example if your accident event took 25 seconds to get to the crash site but power was lost to all components at 6 seconds into to event you would have 19 seconds of zero data.

There are several NTSB reports in which list. notes such as "CVR power lost" or "FDR power lost" no further information.

[unstable load]

Helimutt,I think you'll find that the mag plug inspection is irrelevant to this crash. Long before I joined CHC we were pulling the mag plugs on the Arriel series engines every 25 hours. I started off on the 1S series and we still do it on the 2S engines and if my memory serves it was on a similar schedule on the 2C engines as well.
By the way, those mag plugs are not connected to a light in the cockpit.

[helimutt]

By the way, those mag plugs are not connected to a light in the cockpit.

This I know, but I was told of one event, recently, not sure exactly how accurate the timing is, where the mag plugs and chip detectors were all checked and found clear and 11 minutes into the next flight afterwards, the eng chip warning light came on, a/c returned to base, and all plugs found covered in metal. Engine required changing!

Things happen very quickly once an engine starts to break up, so the 25 hr check, I feel, is probably going to just create more work for engineers and more chances of damage to plugs/wiring etc.

Anyway, whatever the cause, I just hope they find some clue and can pass that information on.
Flying the 76, and after the copterline accident where waterspouts and pilot error were all possible causes!!, I just prefer to have some sort of closure, and I think many others do too. No point in speculating too far but discussion on accidents is a good thing if done with consideration.

[FloaterNorthWest]

Pulling and checking the mag plugs on the Arriel 2S2 is a 30hr scheduled maintenance item in the Turbomeca maintenance programme. Usually this item is moved if a company has an approved maintenance programme. We included the mag plug check in the daily so unstable load is correct.

The North Sea guys won't know this as they have a man that does all that messy stuff for them.

[ericferret]

There is a difference between mag plugs and chip detectors.

Mag plugs on the Arriels are being pulled every day as per normal.

It is a full test of all the chip detectors and their indicating systems that is being carried out every 25 hours. 4x Engine, 2x Main Gearbox, 1x IGB 1x TRGB.

[topendtorque]

Re the data recorders having power shut down and no more recording.
This is a bit of a problem for sure and must be a hindrance when primary sensor logic has not given enough clues as to why the aircraft may be descending. No doubt recording the pilot’s subsequent actions would help to build a better picture. I note the other thread where it talks about transmitting copious quantities of video data back to a monitor during EMS work. (Safety solution for helicopter EMS sorted)

Certainly transmitting coded bursts of information has been around via satellite comms for a while. So while I was tooling along the other day in a straight line I figured maybe the new 406MHZ ELT’s could be put to a more profound use.

Not only can they now send GPS co-ordinates but of course each ELT is coded to a particular aircraft. Perhaps they could also be enhanced to record, on say a fifteen minute loop, coded data from selected inputs such as the famous black boxes, and then transmit that data via satellite along with their distress call to be recorded back at search headquarters.

The other issue of power loss also needs to be overcome via a redundancy package of standby power which will drive the sensors on the critical control points (HACCP) independently of the main power sources.

Patent issues on the data recorders may mean that this would all have to be done externally to the devices.

The ELT may be positioned in close proximity to the data recorders for ease of data transfer via hard wire, but easily breakable, or a discreet UHF frequency.

Recently Nick Lappos invited us all to contribute ideas to be valued for inclusion in new generation helicopters. These issues may gel with him.

HACCP or Hazard Analysis on Critical Control Points was given to us by NASA as a result of a certain O-ring falling out of a fuel tank on a space shuttle. It is now widely used in many industries, particularly the meat industry at abattoirs and processing works in searching for the elusive E-coli, and anything to do with meat safety.

Besides there must be at least a small amount of silver lining in the dark cloud that this accident so far seems to be.
Cheers Tet

[ramen noodles]

topendtorque told us, "HACCP or Hazard Analysis on Critical Control Points was given to us by NASA as a result of a certain O-ring falling out of a fuel tank on a space shuttle."

Are you serious? After the horrendous safety record of NASA, with the last catastrophic shuttle reentry accident based on the foam impacting the wing, where management ignorance and indifference were the principal cause, please spare us any of their safety advice. I believe they need a lot more letters in the acronym before they would get me to believe they knew much about flight safety.

[SASless]

Ramen,

Are you talking about the same NASA that runs the GISS that employs James Hansen.....Al Gore's Global Warming Guru? The same NASA and GISS that does not use Space based technology in their scientific models that predict the end of the world as we know it in the next couple of weeks?

As we all know....AL Gore and Hansen are considered experts and thus by association alone NASA must be experts.

That must be logical as the Shuttle Program's safety record is as about as good as GISS Global Warming Models are.

[Brian Abraham]

I think what topendtorque is referring to is the developement of the "normalization of deviance" theory by sociologist Professor Diane Vaughan, Columbia University, as a result of the "Challenger" accident. Her NASA analysis was awarded the Rachel Carson Prize, the Robert K Merton Award, Honorable Mention for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship of the American Sociological Association, and was nominated for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. As a result of her analysis of the Challenger accident, she was asked to testify before the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003, then became part of the Board's research staff, working with the Board to analyze and write the chapters of the Report identifying the social causes of the Columbia accident (Chapter 8 of the report).