Passenger jumps out of heli during emergency autorotation
 

Ok the passenger was wearing a parachute:)
Great blow by blow description from the pilot.

Multicamera coverage including a hand held shot from the cameraman in the back.


This is the second recording on youtube of a cameraman hand holding a camera during an emergency auto all the way to impact, in this case with an open door and secured with only a slack lanyard!

There was plenty of time for him to improve his survivability, a classic case of the dangers in general, of open door filming, that are exacerbated by the pressure to get the shot.

The pilot was wearing the passengers chute, a bit worrying for the camerman after the front seat guy bailed!


Good that it all worked out well!



Mickjoebill

There's so many questions about this and I'm avoiding most of them, but why the hell is the pilot wearing a chute?

I think it's a legal requirement in this country when carrying out any parachute ops in any aircraft, all on board must be wearing parachutes.

Great Job Roy!
 

Never mind the cause - great effort Roy - right on the numbers when doing it for real! Bet this won't make international news though - "just a pilot doing his job" will be the attitude but at least those of us on this forum can appreciate your skill and professionalism under pressure. I salute you sir!

Yes, when I get spurious aural warnings, with no caution lights and all other indications normal, I always enter autorotation and ask my passengers to jump out........:confused:

Nice landing though ;)

I suppose you could debate the merits of AR in this instance, but given he was near to the airfield and had clear airspace it seems reasonable.

The passenger jumping is slightly more difficult, but if he's got a chute and wants to go, who's gonna stop him?

Those guys will be dining on that story for years :ok:

Might be I need new glasses but didn't see him lift the lever at all at the bottom of the EOL ???

He did but not much. My guess is because he was very light.. Probably not even 50% fuel also.


Good job though.

Maybe because it wasn't a real engine-out landing? Maybe it was because the thing was still producing power? Twelve years of flying and he couldn't determine that the engine had or hadn't quit? No yaw? No rotor droop? Hmm.

Hey, at least the guy admitted that he screwed up, which is like, yeah you had 5,000 feet to troubleshoot a faulty horn and see if it was a for-real engine failure...and you didn't...oopsie! So....well, anyways, nice flat-pitch approach, bub!

Oh yeah, and Bono wants his sunglasses back.

Simply raising the lever during the auto would have told him that the engine was still functioning correctly as the Nr would not have decayed - if it had then he would still have been in the right position for a real EOL.

Since the engine was running he didn't need much lever to cushion the touchdown as it was all power assisted.

Still - a nice PFL from 5K and everyone is safe:ok:

I wonder about the jumper who kept reaching in front of the instrument panel, blocking the pilot's view. I know some pilots who would have pushed him out for doing that, parachute or not!

Hm good point crab about engine as we didn't seem him close the throttle which I presume is in the roof ( ? not a 350 pilot)

Throttle is beside the collective, not in the roof!

http://media.adn.com/smedia/2010/03/...ffiliate.7.jpg

skadi

Once he'd made the (wrong) decision, he was quite professional about the mechanics of his recovery to land, I have to say!

Shame he made the wrong initial decision though:=

In mitigation, he was harping on about hydraulics issues and some associated maintenance. I have heard that AS350's have a notorious reputation for hydraulics issues - is that true?

The hydraulic pump is belt driven. The belts used to fail frequently, or more common was the A/C belt would break and then take out the hydraulic belt.

The resultant loss of hydraulics is really not that difficult to deal with if you have been trained properly.

Nice auto by the pilot.

I wouldn’t worry about the jumper; he was safe the whole time (he also asked the pilot if it was OK before he jumped). I know him and have jumped with him. He’s got near 20,000 jumps and is one of the best skydivers in Europe.

Now regarding the backseat camera guy? I don't know what the hell he was thinking or expecting? - but self preservation didn't seem to come to mind.

Not wanting to be a smart arse but surely you could tell if you had lost power ?
RRPM stable ..... Engine temps where they should be . That should be enough to tell you the alarm is false ? What else could the alarm be warning you about ?
I assume he would have flown it properly if he had been over water otherwise he would be a Darwin winner !!!
Also the 350 really let's you know of any power changes with yaw . I had a dodgy turbine and small surges and droops in power produced quite alarming swings .
( I know this sounds smug , but come on , he had 4 minutes to work it out . I reckon it was all done for the cameras ):ok:

Overall I think he did a good job and played it safe... but he violated a rule I wholeheartedly believe in - once you've made it to the ground in an emergency, stay on the ground. There was an unknown anomaly with the aircraft, he got it on the ground in excellent fashion, then did a quick reassessment and hover taxied on back to the pad. Let the maintenance guys drag it from the runway and ground it until the problem is solved.

Would have been very sad had the issue been more significant and he lost the engine during a hover and not handled it as well as the initial emergency.

Just my opinion.

Mike

TwinHueyMan - wholly agree with you there! Look over the machine first.

Personally, as Captain, regardless of my ability I would have demanded the cameraman belt up in the back and brace up for a PFL.

NigelH - you have many hours and a lot of experience - when things are happening not as expected sometimes it's best to air on the side of caution and get it down - would you wont to prelong a flight in a machine with an over speeding head? I don't know how long the cricket bats would last...!

I agree on getting onto the ground pretty quick to assess the situation , but the head was not over speeding . RRPM was in the green . Temps and pressures were normal . I don't think he did anything much wrong ie an approach which you could turn into a full auto was the right move . It's the thinking he had an engine failure that I didn't get . Anyway it all ended well !!