Originally Posted by Mitchaa
(Post 9714960)
So explain the words "but it's a possibility, it's a possibility" - There's nothing definite about that statement to me.
In the case of an accident, it's imperative that you get caught up in semantics. Everything needs to be crystal clear and to my ears with the words, but, possibility and intentions, those words are far from clear. Just my opinion and perhaps wide off the mark but it's open to interpretation. Some posters are suggesting the crew didn't have a clue where they were and they didn't know they were anywhere near a 300ft rock, I find that extremely hard to believe hence why I am having trouble with the ATC transcript. As pointed out, they need to play it by ear to some extent as things evolve. The lack of contact with R118 was obviously causing them to consider their options. Land the chopper, refuel it and make a plan of action. |
Anyone worked out how long R118 was out of range of Shannon ATC and R116?
Accident investigators say they have not yet found any marks suggesting an impact between the helicopter and the island or its buildings. So how did the main wreckage and the tail parts come to be so far apart? Attempts had been made last night to use the Marine Institute’s ROV Holland 1 in 40m of water off the island’s south-east corner where the signal from the helicopter’s black box was first detected a week ago . The Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was launched shortly after 9am this morning from the Marine Institute vessel, the Granuaile. It is the second time search teams have managed to deploy the high-tech device. A local fisherman in Blacksod Bay this morning said the weather has started to deteriorate after a good spell overnight. Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Eamon Dixon said it will probably be Friday before the sea is moderately calm again. |
Originally Posted by norunway
(Post 9714970)
Your just trolling now, you are obviously not a professional pilot, so what qualifies you to make such outlandish claims.
Any one that has flown, or still fly's on a SAR flight knows the professionalism that such crews fly with, and to say that they misidentified Blackrock as Blacksod is just rediculous. If you know what the low level approach to Blacksod looks like, you wouldn't be making such comments. No once have you asked have the missing crew been recovered yet? Instead it looks as if you are only interested in questioning their descision making on a 30 second ATC clip. Unfortunately, the SAR Crews can also make mistakes like other aviators... We are only Humans... |
Helicopter wreckage located off Black Rock.
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Main wreckage located now by ROV.
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As a professional pilot, my bosses favourite saying is
NO plan ever survives contact with the enemy... So I can well understand that whatever the plan was when 116 left on its fateful journey it would be as loose and fluid as possible to allow for all sorts of possibilities. Certainly, from my POV, the uncertainty is about whether they were heading out to the ship or not, not whether they were putting down for more fuel. |
The wreckage of Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 116 has been located off the Mayo coast. RTE report https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/844537634139467776 Few details on what was found, but current forecast is for a two or three day weather window starting Friday. |
Irish Naval Vessel "LE Eithne" heading to the area where wreckage has been found with family members of the missing crew on board
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For those commenting on the ATC 0000Z recording posted above, note that there was one further call with R116 made on the next tape (from 0030Z) which you can get here. Skip to about 4:30 in the recording.
"Shannon, Rescue 116" "Rescue 116, Shannon go" "Passing 4000 feet now in the descent making our way to Blacksod for refuel, Rescue 116" "Copy ... <inaudible>" |
Originally Posted by gulliBell
(Post 9714961)
I've landed on occasion to conjur up a plan when faced with a tricky situation that required a bit of thought, much easier to do the conjuring when sitting safely on the ground. However when I see the daylight photo of that helipad on Blackrock, surrounded by cold water, at night and in bad weather, there is no way I'd contemplate landing on that in those conditions for that reason. It just doesn't make sense to me as an alternative compared with the other option. Which is why I suspect they thought they were somewhere other than where they actually were, for whatever set of reasons. The under the weather transit reason from where they were to where they wanted to go does make operational sense, except when you look at it from the angle that they actually hit the rock. So by implication, the fact that the rock was there came as a surprise to them. Of course a serious malfunction at a critical point might explain why they hit a rock that they knew was there.
What he said. And no point in micro-analysing the call. It's not a scheduled airline flight with hours of planning. It's a SAR flight with a wide range of possibilities. |
Jurgen Whyte of the Air Accident Investigation Unit said it was the "absolute hope" that the crew are with the wreckage. "It's hugely positive, we could hear the beacon, we were homing in on the beacon and the proof in the pie is we have located the main part of the wreckage which is the helicopter itself. "We have the wreckage so it's just a matter of getting the weather window to get the ROV down, work our way through t |
For me its not far away at all that Blackrock and Blacksod can easily be mixed up.
Can you imagine the reference to the helipads in the FMS....BLARO and BLASO for example... Dont know the CHC SOP for entering waypoints in the FMS but misstakes of putting wrong waypoint in the box can turn out very bad...like in the Cali accident. If they had no Moving map either then its very easy to loose your situation awareness. If that is the case and if they did not have NVD I would really question the operator to put the crews in such difficult situations with not enough resorces. |
Originally Posted by ODEN
(Post 9715468)
If they had no Moving map either then its very easy to loose your situation awareness. If that is the case and if they did not have NVD I would really question the operator to put the crews in such difficult situations with not enough resorces. CHC Group Plan of Reorganization Confirmed by Court | CHC |
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Originally Posted by Red5ive
(Post 9715592)
Could the recent bankruptcy restructuring process have had an effect on resources available?
CHC Group Plan of Reorganization Confirmed by Court | CHC |
CHC outside of N Sea (not known by me) would have been, before flight - 1. check fms approved database in date (if not, manually enter required locations from published source) 2. check user waypoint database in particular for destination / alternate which is mobile (normally marked with 'X' as first input) against latest customer / rig status sheet and read and crosscheck challenge and response Lat / Long. 3. Confirm correct waypoint routeing. A fixed HLS / platform location in the user database may not necessarily have been checked ........
En route, each leg track and distance should be checked against ops flight plan. |
Originally Posted by ODEN
(Post 9715468)
If they had no Moving map either then its very easy to loose your situation awareness.
If that is the case and if they did not have NVD I would really question the operator to put the crews in such difficult situations with not enough resorces. |
CHC outside of N Sea (not known by me) |
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Crew was trained, experienced and qualified. Aircraft was equipped for the task. I don't buy the "there but for the grace of god, everyone messes up sometime, etc" arguments. Operations procedures are meant to be boilerplate, to tolerate the "human errors" that can creep in. "It's 1am and we're all a little tired, lets double check all the FMS entries and get all the gear front and back working for us" - it is called threat and error management. I don't doubt that all other civilian SAR operations have had to stand in front of their CEO's and assure them that this would not have happened in their organization. The "system", from the IAA on down, simply cannot tolerate any kind of unaddressed risk. The "swiss cheese" model is an explanation of operations management failure to address all risk, and falls under the responsibility of the company SMS system and S&Q that is charged with auditing effectiveness of the current and anticipating the worst in the future.
To land at Blacksod on that night you had to get under the weather. If that was the plan at the outset then they could have dropped out just west of Fahy Lough, nice 10x2nm corridor. From the radio transmissions it sounds more uncertain, they may have gone out a ways to try contact 118 before deciding to come back for a refuel. Pprune will know soon enough, some may know already. Us Canadians can't seem to fly without a map Garmin on the panel, but the 92 had lots of mapping capability. Rear crew with their detailed maps showing own position and communicating to the front. EGPWS will paint shorelines and obstacles, so will radar, RadAlts plus GPS altitude if required, user waypoints can be defined as airports and will show up on the flightplan screen (almost Garmin-like), and finally the iPads with any number of apps that map. JeppFD strangely enough shows Blackrock but with an elevation of only 46' - anybody else confirm? |
Prayers and reflection as Rescue 116 wreckage located |
I've been lurking here from a distance, I've old ties with this outfit.
My take is they had problems and were trying to ground at Blackrock. Nothing else makes sense. |
The considerable effort required to launch the SAR effort in this instance for a fisherman at sea with a non-life threatening thumb injury is difficult for me to comprehend also.
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Originally Posted by HandLuggage
(Post 9715169)
For those commenting on the ATC 0000Z recording posted above, note that there was one further call with R116 made on the next tape (from 0030Z) which you can get here. Skip to about 4:30 in the recording.
"Shannon, Rescue 116" "Rescue 116, Shannon go" "Passing 4000 feet now in the descent making our way to Blacksod for refuel, Rescue 116" "Copy ... <inaudible>" |
Originally Posted by The SAR RC
(Post 9715744)
Er, they did have a radar you know. And, we believe, a moving map in the cabin.
Anyway, we will find out soon enough what went wrong. SAR is challanging and the margins are sometimes very small and I hope crews all over the world get all the training and resources they need to do a safe and good job as possible. |
Originally Posted by Apate
(Post 9715754)
Obviously! The Irish coastline is not the N Sea :E
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My take is they had problems and were trying to ground at Blackrock. |
...and if they had an immediate dire and urgent problem with an intent of a forced landing on Blackrock, with 4 crew who would all have access to the outside world on the radio, you'd think one of them wouldn't be able to get a RT call out.
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Operations procedures are meant to be boilerplate, to tolerate the "human errors" that can creep in |
Originally Posted by gulliBell
(Post 9716057)
...and if they had an immediate dire and urgent problem with an intent of a forced landing on Blackrock, with 4 crew who would all have access to the outside world on the radio, you'd think one of them wouldn't be able to get a RT call out.
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R116 was tracking directly to Blackrock for the last 100nm after it left Dublin, and indeed passed by Blacksod about 4nm south, still maintaining a direct track to Blackrock, then went close by Blackrock and then turned back and approached it again. It is clear R116 was consistently aiming for what we know was Blackrock.
This does not therefore look like a late change of plan to land at Blackrock following some kind of emergency. The question is why was the acft aiming for Blackrock. One reason is that they were deliberately using it as an approach point to get visual for a VFR transit to Blacksod. But this makes little sense - why go 10nm further to let down right over a 300ft rock rather than let down over the sea just south of your prob max 100ft elevation Blacksod destination, also having a lighthouse? A second reason could be that they deliberately intended to land at Blackrock and take stock. This makes no sense either - why would you opt for a hazardous uninhabited rock with a probably too small helipad and no fuel? And anyway, you have just told Shannon you are landing at Blacksod. The third reason is of course that they thought they were actually going to Blacksod the whole time, hence the direct track, call to Shannon, second approach, and descent to a height that would have been fine for Blacksod. But then the huge mystery is how could such a fundamental navigation error have been made, and continue to be made, by a clearly very experienced crew? FMS mis-programming would be the obvious answer for the initial mistake - and indeed Blackrock and Blacksod are, and sound, very similar. And if you actually lived in a place called Blackrock, that name would be much more familiar, particularly late at night when you're tired and rushing...... But even if this happened it is still hard to see how such an experienced crew in presumably such a well equipped modern acft with moving maps visible to both crew and cabin would not have picked up this error in good time. |
Regarding reason 3...fundamental navigation error...I'm no expert in the human factors area, but I've got a hunch that a highly experienced crew is equally prone to making a data input error, and not noticing it, as a novice crew. I don't think experience is any protection against data input errors, and what follows thereafter, simply because that is the way humans are built. We have become accustomed to the computer being infallible and lulling us into a false sense of security against our own fallibility.
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Originally Posted by gulliBell
(Post 9716166)
Regarding reason 3...fundamental navigation error...I'm no expert in the human factors area, but I've got a hunch that a highly experienced crew is equally prone to making a data input error, and not noticing it, as a novice crew. I don't think experience is any protection against data input errors, and what follows thereafter, simply because that is the way humans are built. We have become accustomed to the computer being infallible and lulling us into a false sense of security against our own fallibility.
But if it was a data entry error, in their minds they were still heading to Blacksod and their mental picture would have been the approach to blacksod, then the approach they flew would have made no sense? heading to the north abeam overland to approach again over land? Surely it would have been a let down and a run in over the sea without an overfly? especially to such a low landing site? heading off overland first to approach backsod makes little sense to me in poor weather |
Did the S92 in question have systems to automatically deploy both the floats and ELT in the advert of entering the water? My apoligies if this has been asked previously.
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Originally Posted by sunnywa
(Post 9716276)
Did the S92 in question have systems to automatically deploy both the floats and ELT in the advert of entering the water? My apoligies if this has been asked previously.
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Seems like the weather is not as bad as predicted for today. The "Granuaile" is again on station at Blackrock.
skadi |
Originally Posted by rotorspeed
(Post 9716127)
R116 was tracking directly to Blackrock for the last 100nm after it left Dublin, and indeed passed by Blacksod about 4nm south, still maintaining a direct track to Blackrock, then went close by Blackrock and then turned back and approached it again. It is clear R116 was consistently aiming for what we know was Blackrock.
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Unlikely to be heading for the boat since R118 was doing that plus they had already declared they were refuelling at Blacksod before comtinuing on any tasking.
If they had no NVD it is more likely they were using a legacy profile from S61 days to get to Blacksod - if this meant using Blackrock as a visual marker to confirm they were clear of any other terrain then it sort of makes sense but still doesn't explain how they came to hit the rock. |
It must be my simplistic brain, but why wouldn't you just set up a way point out in sea and track in, rather than heading for a bit of rock miles away to potentially get visible with said bit of rock, only to lose it behind you as you head for land, possible losing both landmark references, at least with letting down offshore using radar and taws you can track in direct as required at low level?
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