As seen in the rotor heads video thread;



Interesting!

Remember: "Rotorheads A haven for helicopter professionals to discuss the things that affect them"

Not sure if this has been posted but the Herald ran this on the 8th.


Pilot error 'not the cause' of Clutha crash | Herald Scotland

Imho, nothing but a low life scum reporter trying to get in early with a scoop based on his reading of the Feb 2014 Special report.
https://assets.digital.cabinet-offic...SPAO_04-14.pdf

The giveaway is the strap line, "PILOT error was not to blame for the Clutha helicopter crash, it is understood an interim report into the disaster will reveal."

The reporter was told by the AAIB that this wasn't the final report, yet over a year later with the final report looming, he now reports a self proclaimed 'finding'.


Pretty disgusting behaviour from the reporter & editor considering the demand from the families, friends, colleagues & SMP's for answers.
:=

Pilot error and mishandling of the aircraft are most certainly contributory factors in this incident. There may well be extensive mitigating circumstances explaining why the pilot was unable to conduct an autorotation, misreading instruments, faulty fuel sensors, startle factor, loss of situational awareness, etc., etc.

The fact remains that the preliminary reports indicate that the aircraft was essentially airworthy and had sufficient fuel to reach its base. The aircraft could have entered autorotation had the pilot reacted correctly at the time of the dual engine failure. It is debatable whether this would have affected the final outcome when overflying an urban area at night.

Unless the final report reveals some so far unreported catastrophic flight control or structural failure, then pilot error/mishandling has to be the primary cause.

It is my opinion that a proper autorotation (and a landing) was carried out, otherwise the machine would have gone through the roof immediately, rather than the people inside hearing a slight thump and then having the roof fall in a little later. Faulty fuel sensors are hardly pilot error.

Those preliminary reports are very carefully worded.

Phil

Paco - where have you been for the entire thread on this? Everyone knows it wasn't auto'd onto the roof. It fell at an enormous speed - fact. There was NO auto of any kind, the blades were all intact and the Tail rotor had stopped turning also. Auto???:mad:

"where have you been for the entire thread on this?"

Most of it is fairly useless and not worth the time taken to read it, to be quite honest.

I was wondering why didn't it go straight through the roof and take more people with it? If the speed was that enormous, shirley it wouldn't have been in that good a condition?

I was taking exception to the poster above who was quoting pilot error based on speculation, when the correct term should probably be human factors in any case.

Phil

Paco

As has already been covered earlier on this thread, the roof timbers of the Clutha Pub were made of 14 inch square timber beams designed to hold up five floors of industrial warehousing that were previously built above the premises.

There are video, eye witness accounts and radar plots to substantiate the fact that the aircraft did not enter autorotation. The main rotor blades stalled and neither the main rotor or tail rotor were turning at the moment of impact.

No structural defects have been noted to date that would affect the effectiveness of the flight controls.

All documented and officially reported.

Given all the above, pilot error and/or mishandling of the aircraft are highly likely to have been the most significant factor in this incident. Given the published flight profile, the pilot was apparently unconcerned about the fuel state and the dual failure of the engines would have been unexpected, to say the least. Total engine failure in twin engine helicopters was regarded as an event so unlikely that virtually no training was undertaken to cover such events, although that may have changed now.

So there may well be a case to make that the pilot was faced with a situation for which he had received little or inadequate training. However there is nothing to suggest that if the correct control inputs had been made immediately the engines flamed out, that the aircraft would not have entered an autorotative state. While a successful autorotation might not have resulted in a "safe" landing, this flight effectively ended as soon as the main rotor was allowed to stall, many hundreds of feet above the ground.

Not so in the British military G0ULI. All pilots are thoroughly trained in case of double engine flameout. There was even a case in the '90s where an RAF SK (or possibly Wessex- can't recall off the top of my head) had one, went into full auto and then got the donks restarted. Only makes this accident all the more difficult to comprehend, and I agree it's hard to see how pilot error wasn't a significant factor, but I am keeping an open mind until the final report is out.

IIRC, S-76 C+ Initial training at CAE about 18 months ago included 6-8 autos with both engines failed. Not requiring superhuman skills even for a student with no multi helicopter experience, but then it was in a simulator and I knew it was coming.

You must be joking! In every twin I ever flew in nearly 40 years of flying helicopters, training covered double engine failure. It was then practiced/examined every six months on a VMC base check, both by day and by night and also on every IMC base check under the hood - the latter with a simulated ground level at altitude and the former with a low level recovery.

Many years ago the late Dougal Douglas had a double engine failure in IMC at 4000ft in a 332 near Peterhead due to icing and managed to get an engine going again whilst in auto.

Quote:

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managed to get an engine going again whilst in auto.

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Now that IS superhuman! :ok:

From 2011
Double engine failure on German Chancellor's helicopter

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/446...elicopter.html

Okay, double engine failures happen, but they are not that common compared to the number of flights undertaken.

Lapsed PPL who has an interest in aviation...

Please don't feed the troll:ugh:

Aw, but it's just opened itself up for supper :E

What our lapsed ppl friend is saying is that the complete crew ignored a whole host of both aural and visual indications, cautions & warnings, let alone 'the sense & feel' of the aircraft itself.

The lay troll gives itself away with the comment;
"Given all the above, pilot error and/or mishandling of the aircraft are highly likely to have been the most significant factor in this incident. "

I say 'bollix' to that generalisation and realising that we will be revisiting a whole chunk of this thread, ask G0ULI why they think it was that everyone on board the aircraft would ignore everything that was, or was not, going on with the displays that evening!
:ok:

Sid, I am hesitating to post this cos I know this thread is very close to you, but......just wait for the report. We need an open mind on this one!

SilsoeSid
While police officers are naturally an inquisitive bunch, they are trained to keep their mouths shut and their eyes and ears open when on a job. The place for questions is on the ground, not in the air when the pilot is concentrating on doing his job and the police observers are doing theirs.

If the expert (pilot) says, "Nothing to worry about." Then the observers would be expected to just accept that and save any further comment for the canteen afterwards.

Too much deference to the authority of an expert? Perhaps, but that is the way the Job works or used to work.

Yes I have a lapsed PPL. Yes I have an interest in aviation. Yes I have been involved in a fatal air accident investigation. Yes I have known close friends and colleagues who have been involved in a police helicopter crash - all survived but the aircraft was written off. Yes I have been directly involved with police aviation. No I don't want to give specific details for reasons of personal privacy and official secrecy.

I more than most appreciate the desire to exonerate all on board from any blame whatsoever, but the published evidence to date is not looking too good on that front. I could not read the Herald report without commenting that it contradicted pretty much all the official data published to date.

Have I missed something here. Apologies if I have mis-read Charlie16 and oggers posts but No-ONE - not the military , nor civvies teach double engine failure practice and this has been the case for ages. I was one of the last people to ever fly a double engine off to land in a Seaking in the 80's. And unless there has been a re-introduction since 2008 when I last flew civvy twins, the same applies to GA/commercial. It is deemed too risky and too expensive if errors creep in.
You may be referring to AUTO (engines @ flight idle....or simulator trips, but definitely NOT EOL's.
With that in mind, I think Gouli (with or without his "lapsed PPL") is onto something we all are thinking about but may prefer to keep quiet. The pilot flew twins in the mil before flying twins for the police. He had never flown a genuine double EOL - possibly (POSSIBLY) for decades.
The last radar return showed the cab @ 400'. He was in the approach to his base and possibly descending further when the sequence of engine failures commenced. It may be that he was around 200-400' when he lost the remnants of his flyable Nr. Can he ever have recalled what that felt like? Methinks - probably not. The cab demolished 14" thick solid hardwood beams. That tells you something about his terminal velocity.
Perhaps this report, when it comes out - is going to generate a LOT of soul searching amongst pilots who can't remember or don't know how to fly a twin safely onto the ground without both engines. :sad: