Heli ditch North Sea G-REDL: NOT condolences

[Low Flier]

A Mayday call is a broadcast. You really can't expect to censor a broadcast. Not afterwards, anyway.

As for the Anglo-Saxon expletive at the end: it's not the first time that word has been transcribed from the final moments of a CVR or ATC recording and it certainly will happen again.

Please, let's not get pansy about the reality of what actually happens in fatalities. Please let's not bowdlerise reality, other than with a few indicative asterisks for the usual four letter words which almost invariably occur in such immediacies.

Please let's not confuse or blur reality with some kind of imagery of fragrant Ophelia floating down the Don covered with rose petals, instead of facing the bloody nasty reality of what has occurred.

There is a religious incantation thread elsewhere for that queazy stuff.

[Brom]

It serves no purpose to 'Leak' the mayday call to the press, it would no doubt have been mentioned in the inquest and AAIB report that will follow in the course of time. However, has the 'Feckwit' pilot who asked not to be named (if I find out who it was I'll name and shame them on this site) considered the impact of their actions on the families concerned? I doubt it. The families would, as I said, have learned of this at the inquest. In the meantime I would ask the feckwit pilot concerned to think before engaging mouth and don't add to the grief of those who grieve.

[Low Flier]

'Leak' the mayday call

"Leak" a broadcast to the Press? Oh Puhleeze!

don't add to the grief of those who grieve

Reality does not "add" to the grief of those who grieve. They are already grieving over reality. That is what the grieving process is.

Blocking out reality, such as by trying to block out the reality of a short and expressive broadcast, does not block out grief. Such blocking does not shorten the grieving process at all.

[Troglodita]

Reality?

KeithL,

I hope the "pilot who asked not to be named" is discovered and outed and appropriately dealt with. Would he want his own final "desperate calls" to be published to the world?

All right, lots of people heard the mayday - but it was a fellow pilot who broke the code.

Personally I find the "leaked" Mayday call which I note that you do not discount as false as extremely illuminating and also quite horrific at the same time.

I have also avoided commenting for several weeks on the previous Bond ditching (as a long time close friend of the Captain involved since 1971) and the Cougar crash but feel that the apparent leak about the Mayday call (if true) is possibly the most relevant comment amongst all the sanctimonious drivel that precedes almost any accident discussion on this forum.
IMHO - I wouldn't give a **** if my final Mayday call was made public if it indicated that something catastrophic beyond my ability to control was taking place and I didn't even have the time to communicate the nature of the problem. If nothing else transpires - it gives the AAIB the impetus to dig until they find out what broke.

Are we pilots trying to survive in this World that we have chosen to inhabit or a bunch of Freemason-like individuals with some kind of mindset where we consider anyone who dares speak to the press a

fellow pilot who broke the code.

Trog

[deltayankee]

A Mayday call is a broadcast

Don't agree. It is a radio transmission but it is not a "broadcast" in the sense of BBC Radio but, officially at least, limited only to people who need to know. It is effectively a private communication that should be shared perhaps with the police, the AAIB and other interested parties. But there is no public interest in telling it to the tabloids. It does not add to our understanding of the causes of the accident. It would be enough to say that the mayday call was cut off.

[outhouse]

I will make one comment and then depart this rather odd discussion.
Back in 1972 I made a mayday call; I expected the whole world to be informed and was looking for help.
Seems some now would expect a rather different response a humble and respectful attitude, only those in the know to be informed and we would not want to upset the relations so would keep it secret.
In my case this attitude would have been less than helpful, I and my crew made it, but only because my mayday was open knowledge. A fishing boat had picked up a news broadcast on its radio giving the estimated position I had given. A good end result, never did confirm the reason for the transmission failure but the Pacific is rather deep so never will.
O

[SASless]

Any radio transmission made to all stations which a Mayday call certainly is....is not protected speech.

I do not feel announcing the content of a Mayday call is inherently evil, wrong, or worthy of criticism.

As some have said....it provides some insight into the situation.

In a tight situation one morning I made three text book perfect Mayday calls....according to my flying buddy who was up that morning as well. I did not recall even making the calls..much less what the content was.

Under severe stress we say things that are driven by the circumstances.

Assuming the wording is correct then a very distinct message was relayed by the pilot making that Mayday call.

We all wish we could be as level headed as the PSA 727 pilot who died in the San Diego mid-air.....when he made his final radio call as the 727 was rolling inverted just prior to striking the ground......"Ma...I love you!"

I find this message to be very moving.....there's one of our brothers realizing what has happened and there is no hope left. Could very well have been me.

My thoughts and prayers are with the family and those lost.

[Phil77]

...thanks for sharing outhouse.

I'm not sure if everybody else is concerned about the expletive used, or the general idea that the mayday call has been released by the press. I wouldn't care either if my last call made it to the public - definitely not if something can be learned from it.
I suggest the call indicates a severe situation the pilots could not handle, but not a disintegration of some sort, because the resulting g-forces most likely would lead to not being able to even voice the last word.

RIP.

[FrustratedFormerFlie]

No fan of media dramatisation, and would usually condemn. but consider this. If you were the wife of one of the crew or pax, that truncated Mayday is the best proof yet that your husband was the victim of a shockingly sudden and catastrophic accident and death. There can be comfort in such a revelation of sudden and immediate end - on this occasion at least, though I wouldnt call it licence for all such releases of last words.

[Flyt3est]

Yet another accident thread that descends into "everyone keep quiet blah blah, press vultures blah blah pilots code blah blah" What a load of self righteous BS.

Damn sure if I croaked, I doubt my brother or mum and Dad would be surfing pprune in the aftermath anyway...

And before anyone mentions grief, I have been in the position of facing the press following the death of a close one, and yes I kept my trap shut, but for no other reason than at the time I had no interest in TV, newspapers or anything else. I had no interest in reading newspaper reports or TV stories about the accident. My choice, I knew where the story would be discussed and chose to avoid it. I think most people are savvy enough to make the same choice, either you want to know or you don't.

This is supposed to be an aviation forum for open annonymous discussion is it not? I am amazed at how many people are Type Rated on "What is in public interest and what is not" The thread title is pretty specific.. Isn't it inviting comment specific to accident related information? You could always just ban such threads, that will save a lot of arguments.

And I thought we lived in a democracy with freedom of speech..

[Arnie Madsen]

The last words "Oh F*** " actually tell us a lot about the way pilot saw his situation at the last moment. Quite revealing

It is a good thing he didn't use some of the words we all posted here such as
-Anglo-Saxon expletive
-pansy
-bowdlerise
-indicative asterisks
-immediacies
-fragrant Ophelia
-sanctimonious drivel
-Freemason-like individuals

Because we would all be phoning our English teachers trying to figure out the meaning. In an instant any pilot or media knows what Oh F*** implies. And it is not autorotation. .

[dipperm0]

Any idea the sea depth at the crash site ?

D0

[Low Flier]

I haven't got precise co-ords of the exact location, but looking at the boustrophedontical search pattern being sailed by the seabed search vessel Vigilant, it looks like it's about 040° 17nm from Peterhead.

The water depth there is approx 300' below Chart Datum, ie 300' plus the tidal height. This is well within the normal working parameters for work-class ROVs and is shallow enough for very high accuracy mapping of the debris field.

[HeliEng]

Can anyone advise what sort of altitude the aircraft would have been at at that point in the flight?

Thanks

Helieng

[Droopy]

Low flier, how long have you been patiently waiting for the chance to use "boustrophedontical"?

[GKaplan]

HeliEng,

standard inbound altitude would be 2000 feet.

[HeliEng]

GKaplan,

Thanks very much

mitchaa,

Are all recorded parameters monitored or only certain ones?

[Low Flier]

Droopy,

I used that Scrabble-winning word to tease Arnie Madsen.

For forum-members (edited to add that for some reason the forum censors its own name!) who didn't click on the link soon after I made that post, I should explain that the vessel was bimbling up and down on North/South headings at about 4 knots. That type of search pattern shows that the ship was still engaged in the first phase of the search and was almost certainly using multibeam swathe-sounding sonar and towing a side-scan sonar towfish. It's quite possible that they were also using a laser line-scan to produce near photo quality imagery to augment the high-res 500kHz side-scan data though I suspect tht they may not have had time to mobilise that very specialised bit of kit.

Since that post the vessel has clearly completed that phase and is currently underway to Peterhead to prepare for the ROV phase of the search and recovery op.

The data obtained in phase one will be used to determine the chronological priorities for the ROV phase. I don't know whether a decision has been made whether or not to use live divers to assist in the recovery. If I were a gambling man (I'm not!) I'd wager a McPoond that they will use divers because of the sensitivity of respectfully recovering the human remains and to assist in slinging complex-shaped, large, fragile and very important items of wreckage.

I'm not speculating here; merely sharing a little insight which results from having been very deeply involved in dozens of such grim operations.

I would expect the ensuing priorities to be as follows:
One: Respectful recovery of human remains
Two: CVR/DFDR and HUMS boxes
Three: Selected items of debris, to be prioritised by the AAIB Inspector

[Flyt3est]

Mitchaa

"An alert over a threshold will be reported by the line engineer on download "

You missed my point mate, HUMS is only useful IF the failure happens to be a parameter monitored by the HUMS and for which there is a threshold set. Thankfully failures which are not detectable by a HUMS threshold are reducing, but all the same, they are still there. Thats not a negative reflection on the engineers at any organization, merely a limitation of HUMS.

[HeliEng]

Fly3est,

Is that not what happened to the Chinook? The HUMS clues were there but they were not monitoring that parameter and/or were unsure of what that parameter "should" be doing?

Apologies if I'm incorrect, just what vaguely recalls from the memory