Helicopter down outside Leicester City Football Club
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And they were partners as mentioned in the press below. Eric was also an examiner was well as a pilot.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/760112...naprabha-dead/
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BBC inacurate as always Izabela is a Pilot not just a passenger
Eric Swaffer was a respected Jet and Heli pilot and Izabela Lechowicz was a Pilot and instructor if any one has BBC contacts please can they get them to show the respect a fellow aviator deserves not to be listed as a passenger. Of course the BBC dont allow comments on some of their posts. Sad day for business aviation when it loses two professionals at work....
I'm curious why the take-off procedure commenced from the middle of the pitch, leaving usable take-off path behind the aircraft (not-withstanding backing up slightly during the initial ascent).
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Dibdab, the way I read it, this flight it was single crew, making the person in the left hand seat not part of the operating crew, if she was I might have concerns. The fact she is an accomplished fixed wing pilot in her own right has no bearing on this flight, if she is not part of the crew component she is listed as PAX, hence that is the way the police will have listed her.
It is possible to make contact with all of the large news organisations. Ask for the “news desk” If quizzed by the operator about the nature of the call, simply say you have a news tip regarding the X incident. Dont be ratty as they will be under pressure.Far more productive than posting here. I would go as far as to say that if you are highly experienced on type, calling them immediately after an accident to offer your expertise is likely to improve the quality of reporting and so help the aviation community. Perhaps there is a role for an aviation related association to be a go to? In the early stages joiurnos need to fill column inches, it is just as easy to fill with educational facts than speculation.
Aircraft was pictured lying on its left side immediately after the accident.
The left rear sliding door?? is pictured removed and no obvious effects of smoke or direct flame contact.
Are the rear doors jettesonable?
I’m speculating, was the door removed in the accident phase (by either passengers or through impact), or in the fire fighting/rescue phase.
Spare a thought for those two policemen who attempted a rescue.
Mjb
The left rear sliding door?? is pictured removed and no obvious effects of smoke or direct flame contact.
Are the rear doors jettesonable?
I’m speculating, was the door removed in the accident phase (by either passengers or through impact), or in the fire fighting/rescue phase.
Spare a thought for those two policemen who attempted a rescue.
Mjb
Last edited by mickjoebill; 29th Oct 2018 at 06:17.
Agreed. If the helicopter is rapidly spinning the pilot no longer has any meaningful directional control with cyclic. You pretty much just arrive at the scene of the accident. All the pilot can do is with the collective control, lower to preserve NR until impact is imminent and then full pull at the bottom, and shutting down the engines at some point before then.
Dibdab, the way I read it, this flight it was single crew, making the person in the left hand seat not part of the operating crew, if she was I might have concerns. The fact she is an accomplished fixed wing pilot in her own right has no bearing on this flight, if she is not part of the crew component she is listed as PAX, hence that is the way the police will have listed her.
Was she in uniform ? The Sun newspaper has a photo of the two of them together in a flight deck in uniform.
I've had a loss of TR at night in a (very) high hover in a twin, single pilot: it is survivable with quick reactions and a set of spread crosstubes. I'm unable to find the confirmation of wind direction to sustain the comments about a downwind component to the take off, can anyone verify this please? If that is the case then could there be a LTRE involved when leaving the stadium?
To the earlier comments about back up departures, these have been common for well over 40 years and were part of some operators' SOPs in the North Sea back in the 70s. One well known S61N operator even had that departure as a requirement from the Shetland main runway!
For those unaware of the safety criteria for such a departure it is to ensure the return to the departure point in the event of a rejected T/O before TDP, after which sufficient height is available to transition into Vtoss and climb away. Comments about the stadium being not suitable/unusual/etc would be those not exposed to the full range of helicopter operations throughout their flying careers.
To the earlier comments about back up departures, these have been common for well over 40 years and were part of some operators' SOPs in the North Sea back in the 70s. One well known S61N operator even had that departure as a requirement from the Shetland main runway!
For those unaware of the safety criteria for such a departure it is to ensure the return to the departure point in the event of a rejected T/O before TDP, after which sufficient height is available to transition into Vtoss and climb away. Comments about the stadium being not suitable/unusual/etc would be those not exposed to the full range of helicopter operations throughout their flying careers.
JE, on this rare occasion I don't agree with you on that point. If this had become a routine on-going operation I think there was something broken in the approvals process that permitted it. Take a car ride instead - 5/10/15/20 minutes or whatever by road - and meet the helicopter somewhere other than inside the confines of a public event at a stadium.
...It seems to me that the combination of a sudden onset downwind exposure followed by a spiralling, out of control descent is perhaps more likely to be relevant than the highly unlikely coincidence of a t/r failure just at that critical point. This followed by a rapid dump of the collective in an attempt to recover Nr would fit with an eyewitness reporting a gear-crunching noise (I paraphrase) - perhaps blade stall - followed by relative silence as pitch is reduced.
Gear crunching noise has nothing to do with blade stall and (more likely) everything to do with a broken TR drive shaft flailing around or a TRGB or IGB grinding itself to pieces.
Relative silence not because pitch is reduced, more likely because of pilot actioned engine shut down following TR drive failure.
I do agree however that the wind direction may be a critical factor in what happened here, and struggle with the thought that sudden TR drive failure happened at the worst possible moment.
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Can someone confirm if this was a single pilot flight or was the girlfriend a rated copilot. I would think a rated copilot would be required and have their hands on the throttles for this kind of takeoff to insure that there would be an immediate reduction of the throttles in case of a TRF.
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The chances of meeting this same helicopter,as in a crash, if one had elected to go by car, must be next to Zero ! I am no expert on Rotary Ops,but I was just surrounded by a few that are and they are in agreement that this will likely uncover serious shortcomings and that many malfunctions could have been dealt with if this departure was operated from a pad that ticked all of the boxes. On 1 Caveat that it will not turn out to be "Catostrophic Failure. Even then,I am sure that this particular Operation will be terminated in the future. Not sure when a helicopter last crashed on to a car on the road system.( when it has lots of Altitude to its advantage). I vaguely knew one of the casualties that died in the helicopter that crashed DOWN in London some years ago ! Rotary Flying surely must also have the IMMEDIATE departure and arrival CONE as the point of maximum danger and risk ? As a non-expert,I need to be convinced that the same result would have occured if this helicopter had lifted from a wide open space,as opposed to the bottom of a bucket ! ( Not my Invention of terminology). Sorry,but that is the area/phase that bothers me and those who have now gone home ! Anyway,I will follow it with interest...
gullibell
I don't disagree with your statement #136 but I really wonder how much time anyone has in such an event to think of shutting down the engines - let alone actually doing it. The whole event took scant seconds, there just isn't enough time to do these things, surely? Anyway the infinitessimal statistical chance of a t/r failure occurring at that critical moment is so vanishinglky unlikely that we should really be thinking of more prosaic reasons for the accident.
I restate lhe possibility of LTRE as we know they transitioned up onto a fairly strong tailwind tht possiblt struck suddenly with all the ramifications that includes. This is surely vastly more likely to be the cause of an accident than an exceptionally unlikely yet co-incidental tail rotor failure?
What does scare me is the possibiity - indeed the likelyhood that this accident will do to helo ops what Shorerham did to airshows and vintage jet displays as the CAA is cowed by self-imposed paranoia and meeja pressure to "Do Something".
The levels of ignorant, unnformed and plain vindictive misinformatuon about helicopters being bandied about on news sites and the interweb
is breathtaking.
We should be very aware of this lest we live to regret just lying down and taking it in the future.
I ask again, AW169 experienced pilots please tell us about t/r authority in a significant tailwind.
I don't disagree with your statement #136 but I really wonder how much time anyone has in such an event to think of shutting down the engines - let alone actually doing it. The whole event took scant seconds, there just isn't enough time to do these things, surely? Anyway the infinitessimal statistical chance of a t/r failure occurring at that critical moment is so vanishinglky unlikely that we should really be thinking of more prosaic reasons for the accident.
I restate lhe possibility of LTRE as we know they transitioned up onto a fairly strong tailwind tht possiblt struck suddenly with all the ramifications that includes. This is surely vastly more likely to be the cause of an accident than an exceptionally unlikely yet co-incidental tail rotor failure?
What does scare me is the possibiity - indeed the likelyhood that this accident will do to helo ops what Shorerham did to airshows and vintage jet displays as the CAA is cowed by self-imposed paranoia and meeja pressure to "Do Something".
The levels of ignorant, unnformed and plain vindictive misinformatuon about helicopters being bandied about on news sites and the interweb
is breathtaking.
We should be very aware of this lest we live to regret just lying down and taking it in the future.
I ask again, AW169 experienced pilots please tell us about t/r authority in a significant tailwind.
Last edited by meleagertoo; 29th Oct 2018 at 01:42.
JE, on this rare occasion I don't agree with you on that point. If this had become a routine on-going operation I think there was something broken in the approvals process that permitted it. Take a car ride instead - 5/10/15/20 minutes or whatever by road - and meet the helicopter somewhere other than inside the confines of a public event at a stadium.
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Actually relative silence could be very telling. The TR produces a huge amount of the noise of a helicopter. If it stops that noise goes, often followed by the engines as the pilot stops them. I had a drive failure 23 years ago, the lack of TR noise was even noticeable inside the aircraft and oddly the remaining part of the ride much smoother without all the vibration from the back end. Mine was a drive shaft failure close to the main box so we were spared the sound of the shaft flailing.
Also had had a loss of TR authority on short final to a congested area, class one caused by a teleflex problem. The recovery aged me a lot, it was a very aggressive manoeuvre at low level, back to a run on at an airfield. But as soon as I realised I had a little control I knew it was workable so long as I remembered the training.
Last night’s pilot was an instructor and examiner and very talented aviator, if such a pilot crashes then the rest of us will really struggle.
In the sim, expecting things to go wrong a failure in the cruise can be hard work, effectively in the transition a lot of things are going to happen very fast, with good training and skill luck is still going to play a big part.
Waiting for pax today a colleague and I saw a drone shot from this morning in which all 3 TR blades appeared attached and from the angle of the shot undamaged.
SND
Also had had a loss of TR authority on short final to a congested area, class one caused by a teleflex problem. The recovery aged me a lot, it was a very aggressive manoeuvre at low level, back to a run on at an airfield. But as soon as I realised I had a little control I knew it was workable so long as I remembered the training.
Last night’s pilot was an instructor and examiner and very talented aviator, if such a pilot crashes then the rest of us will really struggle.
In the sim, expecting things to go wrong a failure in the cruise can be hard work, effectively in the transition a lot of things are going to happen very fast, with good training and skill luck is still going to play a big part.
Waiting for pax today a colleague and I saw a drone shot from this morning in which all 3 TR blades appeared attached and from the angle of the shot undamaged.
SND
..I don't disagree with your statement #136 but I really wonder how much time anyone has in such an event to think of shutting down the engines - let alone actually doing it. The whole event took scant seconds, there just isn't enough time to do these things, surely? Anyway the infinitessimal statistical chance of a t/r failure occurring at that critical moment is so vanishinglky unlikely that we should really be thinking of more prosaic reasons for the accident...
A sudden loss of TR drive without prior indications is exceedingly rare, I only know of one previous instance (B412 in Gulf of Mexico, it rolled inverted but the crew had height to do something about it, and nothing at the bottom to crash into except open water).
The flip side is a loss of directional control caused by something other than a TR control/drive problem which is mis-diagnosed as a TR drive malfunction (this happened in China recently). Unlikely in this instance given the experience of the pilot.
Actually we really don't need to think about any reasons for the accident at this point. Anything we might say is just speculation.
Actually we really don't need to think about any reasons for the accident at this point. Anything we might say is just speculation.