Video of a 350 crashing into water at Copacabana
 

Fortunately, the end is happy :ok:

This is an aircraft of the Navy Fire Dept of Rio during a rescue operation (swimmer in distress)

Helicóptero de resgate cai no mar de Copacabana - Vídeos - Assista todos os vídeos publicados - O Globo - Catálogo de Vídeos

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Didnt look like an engine failure as there was no yaw although the coning angle looked great. Not vortex ring, ran out of power ?????

Crikey!

What's all that about then?

Why would it just "run out of power"?

There is no way that B2 or B3 ran out of power...
Sea level, you could probably put another 6 adults in there and hover.

from Heliops on FB

Please try not to mention HeliOps too much on this forum!

There's a good chap. ;) :E

You can clearly see the temporal aliasing effect in the TR caused by the decaying RPM, which would indicate a loss of power.

The pax hanging out the door gets back in pretty sharpish possibly suggesting hearing something wrong or a heads up from the aircrew? Suggesting the problem may not have been instantaneous?

;) Well ..., this is an aircraft of the fire dept and the "pax" is a rescue diver part of the crew !

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Strange one - looking at the spray he was into wind - so Vortex Ring or Settling with Power unlikely.
Looks like a power loss of some kind. If so they did a good job on the ditching- flare, level, cushion - splash.
Glad everybody got out and no rotor parts broke off and headed for the beach.
Gotta say the people in the water were swimming to the rescue in quick time - good on them!

At least the poster is giving proper credit to where he got the info from which is more than most members here do..:D

No problems from me,

Thanks Senior Pilot...
Anthony, don't shoot the messenger...

So - what is wrong with rolling the aircraft into the advancing blade, so's it will take xmon and other paraphernalia out rearwards, thus allowing an organized egress into the briny. Hopefully the door that side in this case will be still locked shut.

Topendtq: You really think he (a) knew about that phenomenon and (b) gave a s*it:eek: He kept it level (ish) which probably saved the loose cannon in the back form being catapulted thru the windscreen.
Lucky boys!

Why do folks insist upon flying over water without Floats?:ugh:

Presumably this would have to be done whilst still having rrpm high enough.
What's better, roll with high rpm or loose rpm and splash level?

Interestingly the tail rotor stopped turning before the main rotor, indicating a drive failure after hitting the water.

TC,

will enjoy meeting you one day and many of your countryfolk.

cheers tet

At the risk of sounding confrontational, why is that interesting? Spinning at 2,000 rpm ish and hitting the water is inevitably going to cause a TR failure :confused:

Flyting - did you see my smiley faces? There's a clue for you there!

Because its more convenient. Because "we're not going to have an emergency". Because installing emergency floats is time consuming. Because the aircraft is lighter without them.

It is very likely that on impact the t/r driveshaft was rendered ineffective. Look at videos of Squirrel crashes and almost always the very first thing to happen is a loss of structural integrity to the tail.