Cooking an Engine - Whats The Punishment
 

Hey Guys,

Just wondering if you could provide some feedback. I have a friend who cooked an engine on an EC120 out in the field. It was an honest mistake and now his bosses want to fire him.

The question is this. If one of your employees cooked an engine would you fire them, reprimand them, ground them, or what.

Thanks for your feedback on this one. Much appreciated.

Autorotate

...death.

Probably won't do that again thou will he?
Still, if the mistake can be repeated then dismissal is usually the option. If it is a goof up, one off brain fart..... no gain by laying him off.

Well to me it really depends on the pilot, I have 6 pilots and none of them have ever done any harm to any helicopter for being careless, everyone's entitled to an honest mistake, so I don't care if they were burn the entire helicopter as long as it was a mistake, I would support them all the way.

Depends on the company. Sometimes bigger companies can hide the loss. Little companies operating on a shoestring may dump you. Remember Pilots are the easiest thing to replace on a Helicopter.

If this is his first mistake, or even his first one in a while, give him thorough re-training, and hang on to a wiser, more experienced pilot. This has been the policy at any operator I've worked for, even otherwise not-so-good ones.

If, however, this is the latest in a string of occurrences with this individual, this history indicates he's a hazard and should be removed for the safety of your operation and clients.

And you can tell a good Chief Pilot by his/her willingness to stand up to management in cases like this.

It all depends. Good employee vs problem child. attitude, history, circumstances surrounding it...

He'll never do that again..

Oh he should expect to be know by his co-workers as "flash" or "torch" for the near future.

rb

We cooked an Allison to a crisp this afternoon...a minor case of buying a $40,005.15 throttle cable to replace the defective cable. The young lad at the controls was not at fault...thus he gets a walk. Now on the other hand...if I could find a way to identify the engineer that missed the problem on the previous dozen hundred hour inspections....that might be a different case.

Actually....this on the face of it...appears to be one of dem thangs that comes with the helicopter business. Simple items fail and cost you your annual profit by ruining expensive things.

Unlike a jury trial, where all other prevous behaviors are off limits, what we judge is the question of remediation. Is this person likely to learn from it? Is this a piece of a string of behaviors, a bad thing? Is his/her attitude one of remorse, caution and self doubt, a good thing, or is it one of finding others to blame, a bad thing?

It is very possible that the safest pilot in the organization is the one who has just reached too far, gotten lightly singed, and is now all the more cautious and wise.

And also, there but for the grace of God go I......Flying is a series of interventions to correct mistakes, keeping them tiny, just at the threshold level.

Cooking an EC120? Too common. See:
EC120 Cooking thread

As for firing: who is the LEAST likely one to cook the next engine? Hopefully this bloke. They have paid handsomely to increase his experience - at least get a return now! But...this is all history dependant as mentioned above.

And i echo Nick: there but for the grace of god.....

Of the 3 S76 hot starts I'm aware of, one pilot was about 7000 hours and the other two 14000+ hour pilots! All from laziness/complacency. None of them were fired. You're never too old or experienced to learn a lesson I reckon.

Although I agree that a pilot shouldn't be "dismissed" for a simple mistake, nobody has considered how the pilot in this particular situation reported the incident.
Hopefully he was honest about it, but if he tried to bluff his way out of it he should at least be heavily reprimanded.
Having said that, I think that far too many operators, big and small, discourage their employees from being open by waving the "big stick" about.
There is so much that can be learned from the errors which are made, or nearly made in some cases, and operators should try to create an environment where pilots should feel encouraged to report any anomalies in an open and honest way so that changes can be put in place where necessary to prevent recurrence.

A good saying I once heard:

"You can lie to yourself and your boss, but you can't lie to the engine."

SASless,

Do I read 40 K bucks for one throttle cable ?

A couple of engine overtemps we had were caused by a third party speaking to the pilot during the most critical phase of the start up.

ATN

If the company has been looking for an excuse to bin the pilot then this particular grey cloud would have a silver lining for them, albeit an expensive one!

As an aside, do not always believe the TOT light!
I did some flying for a company that operated an aging 206L which was regulary having hot starts, despite numerous pilots swearing blind that they didn't exceed the limits. I asked the Chief Pilot time one of my starts, and sure enough, the light illuminated well within the prescribed limits for total time in the band (think it was 810-927, a while ago now)
Even with this as evidence, the engineering company still tried to place the blame onto the company pilots...........
Suffice to say, when the ac was bought by it's current owner, the pre-purchase inspection revealed hairline cracks in the turbine and faulty TOT detection.

Then again, I've been at pilot briefs where pilots have not known the starting/take off limits!!!!!!!

Sacking a genuine guy as a result of a genuine mistake would speak volumes for the type of company his colleagues would still be working for.

Would FADEC be the engine management system of choice.

Surely an advertisement for the Intellistart system, isn't it?
I gather it costs about $15K, takes 40 man hours to install, but would pay for itself in the first hot start prevented. No brainer. How do I buy stock in the company?

Shawn Coyle

Only problem with something like Intellistart is that when pilots get used to it and there is a problem which renders the system temporarily inop, pilots with "mind set" can suffer a hot start as they are too used to the system managing things for them........

Out of curiosity, what is the start sequence/procedure on an EC 120?

A few years ago, I was joining CFS Helicopters at Shawbury and was doing my conversion to Squirrel. I cooked an engine on start as I turned the throttle the same way as my motorbike. The instructor (sqn boss) took the blame as he was captain. A year later I replaced him as boss. My policy mirrored his..... if you sack or severley punish people for errors, they will not report them when they happen. It continues to work and people are honest when things go wrong, safe for all future crews.

SASless....

What kind of failure did the cable have?

Did a rod end fall off?

Not installed properly?

Was it an internal failure of the cable?

How would a mechanic note an internal failure?

As a mechanic, I have seen many drivers waste rotor blades, ball up machines, dump water buckets....etc...

and this makes life very interesting for mechanics...

After the dust settles, maintenance always has to put things back together keeping costs to a minimum, and working long hours....

And... the pilots usually are not seconded guessed.

Just factored into the risk of doing utility work...

You should cut mechanics some slack....