Sad incident at Palamar today
 

Couple of rumors on the street----the most credible is he was landing on a dolly and missed, cut the TR off and started spinning.

2 dead----RIP

I saw this on Facebook from another angle, the rate of spinning was amazing. Don't know why he couldn't hack an engine.

Maybe the occupants had been knocked unconscious? Do you have a link for the other video, Nigel?

The emergency services must have felt quite helpless, unable to get closer and risk serious injury from flying blades, etc :( Last time anything similar the firies spent ages smothering the intake with foam, but it took a lot to put the engine out. Pilot was unconscious, Wessex on the tie down pad at Culdrose.

The pilot is sat considerably forward of the mast and therefore "enjoys" a ride on a centrifuge. Thrown forward and sideways, with a G loading dependent on the rate of spin and the arm, he may not have been conscious after the initial contact between head / airframe.


As to what to do: would it be possible to use the fire truck to soak the engines and cause a flameout? Likely to be difficult enough with the machine stationary but would have the side effect of reducing fire risk.

If he 'missed' the trolley landing then it's another reminder to those who create and use trolleys 'just' big enough to land upon without much room for error :hmm:

Looks like a Squirrel with difficult to reach throttle lever.

@Johan R81
Right question, fire truck had enough time to cover whole "carousel" with foam. Another lesson learned hard way.
RIP for the souls on board...

At about a third of the way through, I thought for a moment that fuel was escaping and had been ignited and was about to fireball.

Nonetheless, I would suggest the RFFS has some deep soul searching to do regarding their (lack of) intervention in this instance.
It is blatantly obvious the aircrew are totally incapacitated and could do nothing.
A fire lance with a 50yd throw @ 400lts a minute would stop that spin immediately or at the very least put the engine(s) out.

Wouldn't want to be the fire chief that shift. :mad:

They have probably been trained to wait for movement to stop before exposing themselves to risk - sadly this is a case where they really should have thought past that training.

TC

Not sure that would stop it spinning would have to hit the tail or what is left of it in one place and keep it there. Even then there is some serious momentum there and not sure water would stop that !!!
Just hope they were out within seconds of that spin:eek:

Ultimately, was there a fire? Both videos end with a lot of jet fuel vapour escaping but no ignition that I can see, though the caption appears to claim a fire did occur.


If so then with fire crews attending considerably before any fire there must be questions to answer.

The last big multi wheel drive fire tender I was stood against was literally built like a tank with armoured glass and big roll bars all around the cab front and side area, could the driver not have rammed it hard to break the blades off, I know spinning blade have huge inertia with them, but could that sort of attack/rescue have worked. or is it fear of the unknown that would have held people back..
But what a very sad outcome, simply though missing the dolly. poor chaps!,

None of the rescue services were helicopter pilots. The aircraft was spinning; they would not have known anything about the theory of tail rotors or torque reaction. To them it was an aircraft spinning out of control and their only option was to wait until either the pilot recovered it or it crashed.

They were there at the time; not sitting in a chair watching the video.

This says "Training Accident" - no mention of a dolly. "Practicing landing"


Two killed in helicopter crash at Palomar Airport identified - CBS News 8 - San Diego, CA News Station - KFMB Channel 8


Be aware that this article names the crew

Farest: They don't need to know torque theory. They do know that suffocating engine intakes - stops engines - stops the drive to the rotorblades.

I have a team of RFFS under me and they are stunned that these guys stood there and watched two pilots die.

John81: I notice:
.

Interesting. I wonder what they would make of an Apache / S92??

Evidence of extraterritorial visitation to our backwater of the Solar System.


But then, that's just the press

I find that video terribly sad.
It must be one of the longest helicopter accidents ever. :(

I don't understand the AS350. If the collective is at bottom, would that not yield "flat pitch" and thus prevent torque reaction?
What am I missing (I did notice the lack of a tail boom).

Same thing happened a while back in Dubai but they were lucky to survive...
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/532...ash-dubai.html

I spoke to a Norwegian crew many many moons ago who hit cables crossing a Fjord. They impacted at the base of the tail cone just at the base of the upstrut supporting the entire TRGB section.

Within seconds, they recalled watching the TRGB section pass them down the side of the a/c before they were flung violently to one side of the cockpit as the a/c started spinning. They eventually managed to perform some semblance of borderline stability whilst still spinning slowly, in full EOL mode onto the water. Both survived. The co-pilot became unconscious almost the moment the spin established itself, but it was helped with him hitting the windscreen side strut with his head.
These AStar guys must have become unconscious within seconds and left some pitch on the blades for the helo to rotate so violently. They surely couldn't throttle back - even to FI never mind shut off.

I wouldnt have backed a hard object into that threshing machine for fear of an explosion. I would have expected my team to have dumped thousands of litres of foam at 80psi onto the cab and suffocated the engine intake of air.

The more I think about it, the more I think the fire crew were derelict in their duty.
What a sad waste of life.

A haunting video. RiP.

I'm amazed it didn't just flip on its side after a couple of spins. Very hard to watch.

Genuine question.
Would dumping thousands of litres of foam at 80psi onto the cab have caused crew to be unable to breath, if cabin open (windscreen gone, etc)?
Yes I know it may be only answer to a desperate problem but that may have been a reason fire crew hesitated.

As I mentioned previously, a Wessex which broke a tie-down on a power run took ages for a directed jet of foam to stop the engine: a matter of 5-10 minutes. The pilot was unconscious, the Wessex on its side, stationary, with all blades broken at the root, and the Gazelle engine valiantly flogging away despite a stream of foam straight into the intake. Admittedly many, many years ago with firefighting equipment unequal to the stuff we have now but a blanket 'area attack' foam may or may not have achieved much in the way of starving the engine or the occupants of oxygen. Especially given the movement of the Squirrel and the associated engine intake.

Accidents like this supports the use of helmets for the pilot.

Notice the bystander comment "blood on the door" @ min
3:35

RJT, thank you, I was wondering when someone would make that all too obvious suggestion. It's far easier to suffocate a pilot with foam than a gas turbine which as we know is very reluctant to stop by this method even when stationary. When spinning like that you'd have no chance whatsoever.

As to backing vehicles into the thing, does anyone really imagine a firecrew would be daft enough to risk the flak and deluge of lawsuits that would inevitably follow? No way could you avoid being accused of hurting the crew. Anyway, how could they know without the advantage of 20/20 armchair hindsight what the alternative result might be in order to prompt such drastic last-ditch action? If you wanted to risk an "explosion" (sic) that would be a good way of going about it.

A pilot misses the trolley, loses the tail rotor and the aircraft spins itself to destruction killing the occupants.

It was all the fire crew's fault!

As someone who was an airfield firefighter prior to becoming a helicopter pilot:

No way in hell would I have tried to physically block the aircraft with an appliance (armoured or not!). Massive risk to the appliance and it's occupants and huge risk to the occupants of the helicopter (who could still be alive and then be killed by the impact). And that's before we even consider the legal / liability consequences.

I would have thought very hard about foaming it - it would have been tempting indeed, but as others have said, i think the chances of it successfully suffocating the engine would be small in comparison to the risk of suffocating the occupants. I'd also have been very wary about the presence of the foam blanket making the surface slipperier and causing the aircraft to spin and slide more violently and unpredictably.

I find the criticism of the fire-crews quite harsh and unfair - this was a one-in-a-billion event that they were faced with.

OH

Bank CEO killed after crashing helicopter

http://aviation-business-gazette.com/

:sad:

What a bunch of crap. EVERY pilot who meets the requirements for the issuance of a certificate or rating is in the database. There is nothing special about it, and BTW---the banks website does not mention how many hours he had.

There are two listings for Bruce Allen Erickson in the database, both with helicopter ratings, one appears to be current, the other is years old.

Hi all,

its not the first spinning A-Star/helicopter.
Just wondering, if a little modifikation could prevent further accidents like that?
Thinking about a gravity activated engine cut off build in 90 degrees to the horizontal in some distance to the rotor mast - with a calculated/tested load for something like around 1 turn per second - which will be well outside the normal flying envelope.
May be a time delay could also be integrated - say 2 to 3 seconds, to make sure, the helicopter is really spinning out of pilot control?
Would give a higher survivability on the ground - and leaves you with autorotation in the air - which might be acceptable.
Any suggestions?

I've never understood why collectives don't feature a guarded and last-resort "kill everything immediately" trigger, or perhaps they do now in the latest generation machines?

I really needed one of those during a running landing in a 109 that lacked drive to the tail rotor at the time. Thankfully I had a cameraman in the P2 seat who was able to chop the overhead throttles at the time that I REALLY needed both my hands on the flying controls. Without him I doubt I'd be here to tell the tale.

You guys can probably think of other circumstances in which you could have done with one of those?

Possibly because that's just what it would do :roll eyes:


So, if the fire service was to drench the ac with water/foam, given the design of the intake, how effective would that really have been?

Way back in the sixties and seventies in Malaysia we were having problems with our single Gnome Whirlwinds stopping which was a bit embarrassing over the jungle. A team from Westlands and Rolls Royce came out to see what the problem was. After the first, for Singapore, light shower of rain it was established by them that it was rain ingestion. We protested that it had happened when it hadn't rained for weeks so to prove their point they set up a trial.

We put a Whirlwind on the tie-down base and Roy Moxham, the Deputy Chief Test Pilot for Westland, and I carried out this trial. Roy did the business, I held the instant cutout so that I could kill the engine before it cooked itself. Rain was simulated by a fire tender in front of the aircraft with two fireman holding a fire hose in front of the open intake door. Their job was to direct the water directly into the intake of the engine.

We started it up and then increased the collective to normal cruise power, 400 lbs/hr. At the signal they turned on the high pressure hose using a mains supply as the base. This meant that the pump would run at its maximum rated quantity straight into the intake.

The engine shugged it off as if nothing had happened.

The collective was slowly reduced and at about flat pitch with the same water flow the engine started hunting about 1,000 rpm or so. After being at flat pitch for about twenty seconds the amplitude increased to such an extent that it was considered logical to shut it down as it was required for training that afternoon.

That was a high pressure fire hose directly into the intake. The Orions were washed when they returned from a sortie. They would taxi to the entrance to their dispersal where two fire engines would give the aircraft a thorough soaking from the front and side. Then they would continue to their parking spot.

Use foam or water to stop a runaway jet engine? Forget it.

The only use I have known where a fire hose is useful in a helicopter emergency was with the Bristol Sycamore. Should a droop stop fail on a Sycamore's rotor head it's blade would strike the boom on shutdown. There was a massive pad on the boom at the critical point that would encourage the blades to bounce over the boom but this was not 100% so an alternative system was used.

A fire engine would be positioned so that its hand held hose would point over the boom just before the pylon joint on the starboard side. The water would be turned on and then the pilot would closed down the engine. As the rotor decayed the errant blade would ride the water jet over the boom until the rotor was stationary.

The blades would then have to be removed as they were made of wood, dried out and then sent down to the tracking tower at Yeovil where they would be retracked as a set.

With the S76, a fire hose would easily stop the engine. When water rinsing after a winch session over the sea, water was gently sprayed in at idle but if done too hard, the engine would stop.

Firehose idea seems pretty hopeless to me. With that spin rate how much foam/water do you think you could direct into the intake as it spun by you? Even the best wingshot I know would have a hard time figuring the lead on that shot, and duty cycle would be about 30%.

So with all this time to think about it , we as a large group of professional pilots
don't know what the fire crew should have done . Don't you think it's a bit harsh to condemn them when they 1) are not familiar with the workings of helicopters and 2) had minutes to think about what to do .
I personally think that foam all over the aircraft and floor would have done little to stop a fuel fire and may have effectively lubricated the rough floor and made the aircraft spin even faster ... But who knows .
On first look I do like the idea of auto spool down to FI after x number of fast spins , especially if you could override it if you wanted to keep power .

Or do it properly and fit twist grip throttle control on the lever.

shut down systems:
another thing to go wrong and activate when you don't want it to?


ceptripetal g:
I count 10revs per 12 sec
so that's about 5Radians per second

5^2=25
times by the radius guessing 2 meters?

gives accn 50m/s^2 or 5g

enough to incapacitate the pilot?
good reason to have tight seatbelts



questions:
were they killed by fire, subsequent to the video end?
was a guy thrown clear as the sound track implies - i guess not?

As their bodies would be thrown forward under the negative G that should be sufficient to cause a massive brain haemorrhage which would kill them.

The same would have happened to the passengers on the Russian airliner as it pitched down and decelerated when the tail was blown off.

Full video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKyzBIuvF30