AW139 G-LBAL helicopter crash in Gillingham, Norfolk

[terminus mos]

AnFI, we know you only like one of everything, but your continued one pilot one engine one blade arguments do not really contribute to the discussion of this sad accident and are becoming no more than an attempt point scoring.

Personally, I am beginning to agree with you, I have 2 balls and you are beginning to give me ball ache, perhaps if I only had one, the symptoms may be reduced.

[Vendee]

OMG they're duplicating the scissors!! - one of the safest things around! now they too can be unreliable.

I don't know about every aircraft type but on the type I currently work on, there are two scissor links. Only one link (primary) is driving the swashplate. The secondary scissor is shimmed such that it only takes up the drive if the primary link fails.

[[email protected]]

dislodging of lower half scissor spherical bearings

where does that say they are duplicating the scissors? It says the sperical bearing in the lower half of the scissors

[Brian Abraham]

The answer to the owner who says "Fly me or else" has been pointed out to you a number of times

satsuma has a very good point when he says

It's about developing a culture. How do people 'grow a set' when they've got significant debts and are fearful for their future? They need some sort of back up, don't they?

Have we forgotten the cause of the very first 139 fatal? Abu Dhabi if you need a hint.

"Torch" Lewis, a very eloquent author on aviation matters in B&CA of old, and corporate pilot and manager from when the business first started, wrote very tellingly in one article of the pressures crews have to resist from the "boss", and detailing an ILS in zero/zero conditions he made in a Lodestar while subject to same.

Trouble is in a small corporate organisation there is no back up.

[John R81]

A huge amount of time and trouble has been invested in the system for resisting "nasty rich guy". It is installed in the (mostly right) front seat of the helicopter. Sometimes that device is defective in construction and an element of 'coward' remains, which will cause the device to default to an 'easy' option of 'giving in'. Such devices are unfit for service and should be removed & replaced.

Take responsibility, as training and air law demand, or take off the fancy dress.

And to those posting - stop giving the impression that giving in to nasty rich guy is 'understandable', even 'acceptable' (my interpretation of 'apologist' (my term) postings). It is not, and never will be, acceptable to shirk responsibility for the safety of the aircraft, crew & passengers, and those on the ground during YOUR flight. That is a change within the power of pilots on this board that will have a positive impact on anyone up-and-coming in this industry, like my own child.

[ShyTorque]

John, exactly. That is why it is important to state that fact on this forum. Even at the risk of being told by armchair experts that one is being selfish.

Flying private corporate is potentially one of the most demanding jobs in the rotary world and is not for someone who doesn't really know his personal limits and / or doesn't have the resolve to stick to them.

Private owners demand a great deal for their money, understandably so. But however good they are at making money and however many years they have flown in the more comfy seats, it doesn't make them aviation experts.

Highly successful business people get where they are because they are good at pushing things to the limits, finding loopholes in regulations and exploiting them to their advantage. They will expect those who work for them to do the same. That mentality will sometimes involve a level of risk taking. This doesn't fit in well with aviation. A helicopter captain must always be able to know when the risk is unacceptable and to say enough is enough.

[Agaricus bisporus]

and is not for someone who doesn't really know his personal limits

Hmm. If I may roll in my twopence-worth?

I'm rather uncomfortable at all this talk of "knowing one's limits". We are all trained to be capable of flying to the legal limits - be they VFR or IFR and though there are cases where one might decline to operate in conditions above these "knowing one's limits" is seldom the deciding factor. Yet here we are talking about this as though it were the main criterion as opposed to what the regs let us do - and here I think is where many in our business come unstuck - by disregarding the regs and saying (to themselves, I hope), "Well, the fog isn't that deep, we'll pop out into good victor mike in a hundred feet, I can hack that" or similar. NO! If you are on a VFR departure (as, for instance, a night confined area must be) you CANNOT do it in IMC, regardless of whether you think you can hack it. I've done it, who hasn't? We all pride ourselves on getting the job done and sometimes this brings the blinkers a bit closer to the head than they should be. Trying to get into a confined site in fog when base, 20 miles away is wide open for instance, or texting while doing it...

I think there's often a huge temptation to fly to "our limits" as we self-interpret them rather than annoy the boss/client and get regarded as the guy who says "No". The alternative - being the guy who says no isn't much fun I grant you, I've been there and lost employment over it, quite unjustly but if there is another guy who will and you won't then who do you suppose gets the work?

I don't know if there is a solution but my experience with charter and corporate was that the educated clients (aviation educated I mean) were fine, but some of the others were a nightmare. If you leave the drunken sods at Cheltenham because they turn up at 1730 and it will be too dark to get them into their garden the boss creates because he gets the irate call from the pax who now won't pay. Ditto if you drop them off at Elstree instead, or take them to base and order a 30 mile taxi. It's a lose/lose situation.

Grow a pair? Come on, we're only human, and when the boss is the richest main in Turkmenistan and he owns the helo you fly and the company that operates it, and you have a mortgage, a wife and kids...what do you do - in reality, if you want a reference when you leave?

I once flew for a small G reg airline of whose fleet of half a dozen aircraft not one single one was fit to fly IFR, some with multiple no-go faults. Failing to bust minima earned public scorn from the CP in the crew-room. Yet no one snagged the aircraft and no one cancelled flights over this - we didn't dare. How would we get another job if we did the right thong and got the boot? The CAA weren't the least bit interested either. Go tell them to "grow a pair"!

It isn't anywhere near as clear-cut as we'd like it to be, and, as ever, the rule is caveat emptor when you take on a job. Good knowledge of the industry can keep you clear of some of the chancers, but not all, it's all a bit of a lottery for the pilots. For the employers? Well, there's plenty of others who'd kill for your job. Ever heard that line before? Kill themselves maybe, some of them. Because the Company doesn't kill anyone...

[Pittsextra]

How has leaving everything to the captain worked out in the last 12months or so? If you take a purist view it’s a strong argument but it is clear that there are failings and in the majority of recent accidents those failings are with paid pilots of great experience. So where does that leave things?

For reasons lost to me aviation has seen a great race to the bottom in terms of compensation and conditions. Not only has pay been eroded but you find that individuals are paying for their own training and now we are in this quite ridiculous situation of pilots happy to fly on a contract basis by the hour and only paid if they fly… Now that might not be directly relevant to this accident but it is set against this background.

Its been said many times here to the effect that should a pilot not control the owner then he isn’t worth his salt, but that’s just the same as saying that anyone who drinks 10 pints and drives a car isn’t worthy of a driving licence. It might be true, it might be obvious, it might be valid but it doesn’t change the potential end result.

Doing nothing is easy. Turning a blind eye, that’s easy. The individual in these circumstances might be reckless or oblivious to their actions but specifically this owner has had many “complaints” on this forum against how he ran things and I can’t believe that other professional pilots are not having actual conversations that don’t raise eyebrows.

The “professional” in professional pilot might mean more that just the fact money changes hands.

[212man]

....the educated clients (aviation educated I mean) were fine...

The owner of G-NIVA probably being the ultimate example of that!

[satsuma]

Oh ShyTorque, must we really wave our logbooks around to be considered worthy in your eyes?

As ever your contributions to this thread have been based on your armchair's many years of flying experience and thousands of rotary hours. My armchair's done alright for itself too over the years. It's impossible not to be impressed by your wealth of knowledge. However Shy, you've not been shy in telling us about your enormous pension, your willingness to walk and leave others who may not have your clout to continue to dodge bullets, words to the effect of your concern is only for your backside and those immediately connected with your operation and that if others can't stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen. To me, those sentiments seem neither sympathetic or selfless.

I don't care if you don't like my idea. It was just an idea to try and help address what is evidently more accidents waiting to happen to young men trying, in many cases, to cling onto jobs, feed their families and pay off debts. You're beyond that stage in life but have some sympathy for those that aren't. You don't need to fly corporate to be able to see from contributions in this thread and others that the pressures facing them are immense and in some circumstances, unacceptable. SND's mention of a corporate ops manual may be a good starting point. Something has to be done to protect these guys. Something a little more imaginative than, 'If I don't like it, I walk.' Not everyone can walk.

[Pittsextra]

Not everyone can walk.

.....and clearly not everyone does walk. When the machine is all torn up and the people dead its a bit late then.

The CAA need to step up.

[Sir Niall Dementia]

Satsuma;


As I also mentioned, I don't think it will help at all, let alone save lives. If you can afford a two crew, twin helo then chances are you will be used to bending the rules to suit you, getting your own way in everything. I've had customers storm off when I've refused to fly under AOC rules, had all the pressure they can bring to bear, been sworn at and abused. The guys desperate to hang on to their jobs are the most vulnerable to pressure, possibly the most likely to bow to the pressure, less likely to tell the boss to sod off, more likely to have an accident due not only to the pressure, but also the fact their relative inexperience will cause them to get into situations that a more experienced pilot will have seen and survived, and decided to never see again. But the boss expects rule bending, because that is why he is the boss. He probably grits his teeth at Health and Safety rules, treats the taxman with contempt and can't see why his helicopter won't fly when he says so, despite Corporate Ops Manual and SMS.


I've had a lot of fun in this business, but I enjoy it far more because I will no longer be pressured by people who aren't prepared to listen, and who want me to risk my life and license at their whim.


SND

[pseudorandom]

For What It's Worth

I have been flying corporate VIP helicopter ops for well over 10 years now and find my self soul searching every time there is another fatal accident, just like many of you who are keeping this thread going for so long.

I would like to try and summarise some of the excellent points made and throw in a couple of my own.

So lets start with the clients. It is certainly true in my experience that helicopters are very likely to be favoured by self made businessmen. The ones I have flown may not always have started 'poor' but they have all taken or created a small business and turned it into a hugely more valuable one. To do that takes a huge amount of resilience and single minded drive. They are specialists in making people do things that they either don't want to, or maybe even don't believe are possible. The trouble is that they often can't switch off those personality traits and yes, many of them are also risk takers. They do indeed often view regulations and advice they don't like as something to work around because that has got them to where they are today. They are also very prone to making up their own mind about the merits of an argument even if they don't have the required knowledge. They are often not very interested in being educated about aviation because a) its time consuming to do it properly, and b) in their minds they already know the answer because they have worked it out!

So what about the pilots. Well despite our own individual quirks I believe that most corporate helicopter pilots have a number similar traits. We tend to also be high achievers in our chosen field. We tend to confident about our abilities and most of the ones I have met are very keen to 'get the job done'. Not at any cost but one of the critical skills is to give the rich and powerful passenger options. Plenty of warning of problems and varying the exact departure and arrival point are tools that we all use regularly to make keep our passengers happy.

The interesting thing is the environment that these two groups find themselves in.

There has been a lot of discussion about the need to have perhaps more regulation or enforcement or even backbone. But the trouble is this. Lets suppose that in your machine you have decided that the minimum cloud base for a visual takeoff into IMC is 200' and 800M. Thats fine when you are at an airfield with reported met. I challenge anyone to stand in a field in the dark and tell me what the cloud base is with any real level of accuracy. Visibility isn't much easier. Yes there might be some lights to give you an idea, but there might not be. Yet we all use the best judgement we can to decide whether it is safe to go, or not, and we are mostly correct. Sometimes we are wrong and end up with a 'I wish I hadn't done that' thinks bubble. But we live to fight another day. To be honest I am not worried about anybody trying to prosecute me in those circumstances because there is no evidence!

So we end up with this rather dubious mix of money men who want to get the job done, and pilots who want to get the job done operating in an environment of limited or none existent data. So the weather is not what you were expecting. You gaze into the mirk and think I'm not happy with this, and say so, but then lead pax starts to use their persuasive powers. "Are you sure because its really going to cause a problem if I can't go tonight?". Now, if you are sure it's easy, you say so, even if lead pax does get stroppy. But, you are often not in a position to be sure. It's a judgement call and you, 'want to get the job done' as well.

As we are, (mostly), humans we are subject to our ability to rationalise things and then all the things that we have heard about, confirmation bias, risky shift etc all start to make their mark.

If you take the 109 crash en route to Battersea, Pete had already had a look at Elstree and decided to go back to Redhill. But then he got the text "Battersea is open" ( from a client who claims to have been relaxed about not going). Now you get a last minute re route in really nasty conditions. I doubt that Pete was bullied into that decision, my guess is that he felt it was within his abilities.

Next lets have think about Steve Holditch. As I recall he had made an approach to land in very similar conditions to the LBAL accident and ended up in the hover in a field. Had he stopped there we would not have heard about it. But instead he elected to effectively hover taxy the last bit, lost orientation and the rest is history. Again, was he bullied? As a 20 years experience chief pilot, I doubt it. I think it is far more likely that he thought he could finish the flight off safely.

So, are pilots bullied? Of course, I know I have been, and when I felt it was my livelihood at stake it did make me more compliant. This was at an AOC holding operator by the way and eventually I threw the towel in and went elsewhere. It is my honest opinion that, despite this, pilot over confidence is also a major factor. This can be reinforced in the strangest of places. For instance, on my CAA CPL check ride my examiner got me to fly my R22 into real IMC to check my instrument flying!!! Another of my peers was directed to fly at about 800' over suburbia in rubbish weather on his test, and no, he would not have been able to land clear if the lycoming coughed and we both passed.

There are no easy solutions. I recently saw a rather interesting quote that neatly summarises how I try to square the circle. It went something like " A superior pilot is one that doesn't put himself in the position of having to use his superior flying skills". In recent years I have tried to remember that when making a go/no go decision.

[Sir Niall Dementia]

Heliport;


Around 10th July 2012 IIRC?


SND

[ShyTorque]

Satsuma

Oh ShyTorque, must we really wave our logbooks around to be considered worthy in your eyes?

Not necessarily, but this is a forum for helicopter professional and it says so in the title. If you don't have relevant experience, why expect your controversial views to go unchallenged?

As ever your contributions to this thread have been based on your armchair's many years of flying experience and thousands of rotary hours. My armchair's done alright for itself too over the years. It's impossible not to be impressed by your wealth of knowledge.

Would you prefer to go and pontificate on a site for non pilots or to discuss it with those who actually do the job and have some idea of what they're talking about?

However Shy, you've not been shy in telling us about your enormous pension

My pension is not even large, by any standards, let alone enormous. The word enormous is pure fabrication on your part; I certainly never used such a term because it isn't true. I used the expression because I merely wanted to make the point that I intend to reach pensionable age in one piece and outside of a wooden box. Only one person can do that and it's me. Same for all the other pilots here. Many of my aircrew ex-colleagues and some very close friends sadly didn't get to collect any of their pension.

your willingness to walk and leave others who may not have your clout to continue to dodge bullets, words to the effect of your concern is only for your backside and those immediately connected with your operation and that if others can't stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen. To me, those sentiments seem neither sympathetic or selfless.

My point is that any and every pilot has to stand up for himself and his own responsibility, which is to ensure that the flight can be safely made. It's not merely my opinion, it's the legal requirement. That rule already exists.

I don't care if you don't like my idea. It was just an idea to try and help address what is evidently more accidents waiting to happen to young men trying, in many cases, to cling onto jobs, feed their families and pay off debts. You're beyond that stage in life but have some sympathy for those that aren't. You don't need to fly corporate to be able to see from contributions in this thread and others that the pressures facing them are immense and in some circumstances, unacceptable. SND's mention of a corporate ops manual may be a good starting point. Something has to be done to protect these guys. Something a little more imaginative than, 'If I don't like it, I walk.' Not everyone can walk.

I didn't say I didn't like it, I said your intentions were honourable. But I'm very much aware of the very unlikely likelihood of it being a practical solution.

I was also once a young pilot, wanting to cling on to my job, feed my young family and pay off my debts, as you put it. Throughout my working life (all of it as pilot) I have sometimes been put under immense pressure to fly. I therefore have every sympathy for any pilot put in a difficult situation possibly similar to the one being discussed. Believe me, it matters not a jot what is written down when the chips are down. The pilot must walk away if he thinks he cannot do the job in safety and legality. If not, it becomes the expectation and he leads open the path for the person putting on the pressure to do it again with other pilots and that is when an accident is likely to occur.

I'm not saying that this happened in this tragic accident; I mean in general terms.

[satsuma]

Are all metaphors lost on you? Never mind.

[ShyTorque]

Are all metaphors lost on you? Never mind.

I thought we were discussing aviation safety here, not the intricacies of the English language.

[jellycopter]

****e old chap,

I do believe you're being trolled.

JJ

[ShyTorque]

JJ, Thanks. Yes, you could well be right. But the points need making in words of one syllable, in any case.

[Tandemrotor]

satsuma

Are you a professional pilot?

Many professionals are telling you, your naive idea WILL NOT WORK!

It all comes down to people having the training, experience, skills and character to have rock solid bottom lines. Reinforced by a very real fear of losing their own life and/or licence, and/or liberty. Rather than just a fear of losing their job!

SMS is little more than an aspirational wrapper, that can never protect people 'on the day'!

You can't accept that because you have little, if any relevant experience!