Loose Engine Cover Forces Fox 5 Helicopter to Land in Field
 

http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/pages/N...Y&pageId=3.2.1
There is a video from the tail camera showing the event. :ooh:


Regards.
Aser

Not an engine but gearbox cowling
 

The only thing I can say is: poor preflight check!!!!
Happened to me also one time :ugh:

Spencer17

It's actually the Main Gearbox cowling. We had an engine cover break away on our old Squirrel, many years ago. It struck the tailrotor on the way, breaking the drive shaft. A safe run on landing was made back at the airfield. :eek:

Looks like the pilot told the cameraman to switch camera views when they realised what was happening :eek::eek:

My guess would be he just screwed up as doesnt that metal bar which is used to hold the cowling up have to be clicked into a latch when you close it. In the image it just seems to be flayling around in the wind.

The semicircular clips holding those bars in place get fairly loose sometimes, so I wouldn't read too much into the fact that the bar's flailing around, but it does seem unlikely that both of the big cowl fasteners and the small spring fastener up the top could all let go.
Mighty Gem, with that tail rotor drive shaft problem, do you know what speed they ended up running on at, just out of interest?

As they say with retractable gear "there are those that have and and those that will" :}
Maybe EC should think of making that H stab camera basic ship :E

Who's the vendor?
 

Are they still contracted with Helinet?
HB

Not sure, but it looks about 60kts on the video.

they seemed to land quite far into the field, too? Any reasons?

Which can be seen here.
Rather poor quality unfortunately, but you can make out the stationary t/r and the black area which is the where the part of the engine cowling is missing.

Yes they are

Who's brave enough to own up.....
 

..... on this anonymous forum to having had a 350 or 355 cowling or baggage door open in flight?

We all know that Aerospat can't make things that open stay shut, even if we do help sometimes by not closing them first. 330 Pumas aren't too good either.

Maybe it's because they spent so long making Al 2's and Lamas which don't have any cowlings or doors to speak of, they lost the skill in the workforce.

Fred

I'll bite.
 

I had an interesting experience with the 350-B4 which has a "suicide door" like the ones on the A-Star ( but with a less positive latching mechanism) .

I had flown the same tail number all week, and the first flight of the day, post load walkaround, I neglected to check the latches of the suicide door on the right side.

120ish knots when it opened, interestingly without opening the right forward door. Made quite a bang as it hit the airframe ( denting it ). :eek:

After landing back at the field, the pax wanted to know if this meant they weren't going to get their tour. I said "I don't know, but I know that I'm not getting one!"

Luckily found out that our Asst. Chief had had the same mishap not that much earlier, and that another op. had their suicide doors screwed shut.

Door back to EC, airframe repaired, about $18k USD in parts. :bored:

A few days later, a competitor's pilot walked up to me and said that he had been in trail, and watched me rain shattered plastic window bits all over a busy blvd. He commented that I sounded very cool and professional explaining to ATC. :cool: I explained to him that i may have sounded calm, but it was definitely a shorts-changing experience! :sad:
HB

A bit of info for the pot!
 

Unfortunatley this has always been a human factors issue and will continue to remain. This very issue of loosing cowlings in flight on the AS350 Gearbox cowlings and the AS355 engine and gearbox cowlings has been addressed in the UK - Please see http://www.aerospacedesign.co.uk/ad_compliance.htm
For some back ground info.

PS had never had the chance to see the G-BOOV stbd engine cowling incident on film thanks for the link.