cncpc - what is puzzling is that they chose to letdown to Black Rock in the first place - it is about 10Nm from the Blacksod refuel site (unless they have moved it).

It wouldn't be unusual for the rearcrew to transmit to the CG that they were landing even if they were a few minutes out.

I can only presume the intention was to let down to the area of Black Rock to get visual underneath the weather and then fly low level into the bay for Blacksod.

I can also only presume that their nav kit was telling them where they actually were as opposed to where they thought they were but I still find it odd that they made a downwind approach to the area of the rock.

We know they were going to Blacksod for refuel but it seems an odd way of going about it. One problem might be a mass of radar contacts in the bay that prevented a better letdown profile - if the bay is anything like the Castletown Bere area, there are hundreds of buoys and fish farms - not actually a hazard unless your SOP is not to overfly a radar contact which then maes life more difficult.

Looking carefully, their path shows a bee-line for Blackrock from takeoff. And their last call said they thought they were approaching Blacksod. One possible explanation of this whole thing is ghastly, that they set 300 foot tall Blackrock as the navigation destination instead of sea level Blacksod.

Navigation to Blackrock not Blacksod given similar names?
 

Attachment 1920
As can be seen from the picture above, the AIS flight route appears to show
blackrock being the intended destination from a long distance off.This flightpath
appears not consistent with any approach to blacksod LH. Is it possible that the incorrect
LH /was programmed into the navigation system at EIDW given their very similar names ie blackrock instead of blacksod?
Expecting a sealevel letdown west of the intended blacksod lighthouse but with 300ft cliffs there at the actual position of blackrock lighthouse instead. Could this explain the debris found at blackrock?It sounds simple but the map and AIS data is very clear.Why would 2 nearby lighthouses have such similar names surely they should have more unique identifiers?

CHC statement
Honoring Our Rescue 116 Crew | CHC

According to the press, Dara Fitzpatrick has been based at Shannon, Waterford and Dublin, with possibly the greater portion of her service being at the two east coast bases. As a result, would she have flown to and landed at Blacksod all that often during her career? And the same goes for the other R116 crew members? How often do the east coast crews venture over onto the western seaboard given that there are two machines based on the west coast and are (generally) readily available to support each other?

Crab, or anyone else with the knowledge, presumably Blacksod does not have a formal approach, so how would one make an approach in dirty weather, what limits apply?

Thanks from the unknowing.

I would be surprised if the ICG has not had "company" GPS approaches designed for each helipad it would use. These aircraft have to operate in very poor weather, and an instrument approach would seem to be mandatory at those heliport/lighthouse combos.

I would think it would take a series of events before an "approach" thought to be at Blacksod became the Blacksod approach at Blackrock. If that were the case, Blackrock light is likely above Blacksod minimums.

Nobody has denied the Blacksod destination story, but as a poster says above, that may be protocol for any number of good reasons. If something was not right in the boxes, it was not right on liftoff from Dublin. The aircraft flew to the co-ordinates of Blackrock but there are a number of scenarios as to how that might have happened. If it was programmed as a GoTo Direct, and canned approaches aren't used, then you have a single wrong waypoint and approach plates for Blacksod on the clip.

Surely there is a control center somewhere that is always in comms with these machines, and surely someone must have thought What the...watching this aircraft if it wasn't going where it was supposed to?

There's only one Blacksod, which can't be said about Black Rock.

Looks to me like Blackrock was entered into the FMS instead of Blacksod.
The last call was "Landing at Blacksod"
EGPWS doesn't give much warning on a near vertical Cliff.

RIP.....Thoughts are with Fam & Friends

It is hard to believe that this could be CFIT with a bloody great lighthouse showing its bright beam every few seconds (assuming of course it was working).....I am pretty sure even if they had decended below the level of the light and vis was poor the loom of the light would be visible.

Before the Irish CG got the 92s, any long range jobs were given to the RAF at Valley or Chivenor because we had the better range,

There were only 2 refuel sites on the West coast - Castletown Bere and BlackSOD - I can think of no reason to add another on top of a 300' rock.

We used to organise periodic recces for our crews of the most likely refuel sites, Blacksod for Valley and Castletown for Chivenor so I would think that the Irish crew would at least have had a working knowledge of the sites, it's not like any of them were newbies.

I don't know the CHC SOPs so they may have had a preplanned letdown and a home-grown plate for an IMC approach to the Blacksod area - otherwise it would be similar to how I described it earlier with a combination of radar clearances and the SAR modes of the autopilot to transition down safely beneath the weather.

It is possible they got down on the Westerly track and then turned downwind to transit to the refuel site at low level but I still can't believe they flew into the rock without realising it was there.

Crab, let me run this possibility by you, and see what you think.
Initial approach on Westerly heading was an attempt to get in visually. Finals checklist includes item "Radar-stby".
This approach - lost visual, go around. Go around checklist does not include include item "radar-on". Second, ARA-style approach conducted with radar at stby, and SA is lost as a result.
I have seen similar in OGP sim training.

Well unless something has changed recently, CHC Finals check ( from memory by PNF) that included Radar-STBY was only after visual with the landing site. So if they never seen the landing site they would still have the radar on in the GA.

From what I can see, that light is not manned, it's some sort of automatic acetylene thing, or was at the time of the article I read. That house is not habitable, there is no slate on the roof on the other side. No sign of fuel tanks there.

If this is a misprogramming of the FMS waypoint for Blacksod, with the waypoint named Blacksod, but carrying coordinates of Blackrock, it may have been there for some time. This machine may never have gone to Blacksod before that night and the error wouldn't have been noticed.

The story of two missed approaches at Blacksod doesn't stand up. A poster above has a good insight when he/she says that they may have tried for the visual westbound, missed and came back the other way.

Irish Lights said the light was working as it's monitored from Dublin,their ship "Granuaile" which has a large platform and heavy lifting crane and has the capability to stay on station has arrived at the crash area but weather is very poor until Sunday at least, there will be a minutes silence before Ireland play England in the Rugby match to remember the brave crew of Rescue 116

Plod

Surely the radar is memory items short finals .... no drama with wow standby mode. How can you contemplate ARA / coastal approach without radar until visual identified?

NonPCPlod - I think your question has been answered - unless the CG use a SAR helo in a completely different manner to how we used to use ours, the radar would stay on throughout the whole procedure, up to and including any transit below weather to the refuel site.

A simple FMS faff might explain how they ended up initially going towards Blackrock instead of Blacksod but once in the area with all the mapping it should have been blindingly obvious that the terrain was nothing like what they should have been expecting, from even the most cursory glance at a map or a LS directory - big rock in the middle of the sea vs LS at the end of a narrow inlet.

I would emphasise that this happened at 01:30 ish, a poor time physiologically to be flying anyway even if you have been rostered to do so. But, when you have been dragged out of your warm bed in the middle of the night, it can be doubly disorientating and make normal mental processes much more demanding.

As a generic statement it's clearly nonsense, as the 'E' means Enhanced and reflects the fact that there is a look ahead function using a terrain/obstacle database. Normally there should be cautions and alerts from about 30 seconds onwards.

However, the look ahead envelope reduces below 100 kias and is inhibited at 70 kias, which is pretty much the speed they were doing, judging by their groundspeed. Also, if Low Alt mode is used, the envelope further reduces and there is also a Terrain Inhibit function inherent in the MK XXII EGPWS but which is not available in the standard S92 - I can't help wondering if it is available in the SAR machines, as there would be good reason for it.

I don't buy the claims that the waypoint entry was a mistake - it looks like a clear cut cloud break procedure using the westerly-most obstacle as a reference.

helis flightpath was direct to blackrock for some time
 

Is there any scenario where you would route towards blackrock to make an approach towards blacksod?Surely such an obstacle would be avoided with far safer approaches further north available.It appears that the heli tracked directly to blackrock instead of the intended blacksod .Upon seeing the lighthouse one could believe they were already at blacksod especially at night however blackrock is treacherous with its 300ft cliffs and nothing like blacksod.For whatever reason the heli was navigating directly towards blackrock for some time before breaking the irish coast (see AIS data attached).It would appear either blackrock was programmed into the fms from EIDW essentially a typo(unlikely with such highly experienced and capable pilots) or the fms was faulty and as CNPC stated may have had blackrock coordinates in a waypoint called blacksod.If the crew believed they were at blacksod lighthouse but were actually at blackrock lighthouse, at night they would both look the same afterall a lighthouse is a lighthouse but with vastly different surroundings and approaches required.


Attachment 1921

Why would you choose the Westerly obstacle as a reference? The FMS/AP can do a letdown to anywhere (as I understand it) - just press the button and it does a target let down pattern to the hover. Doing it 10Nm away from your intended landing site doesn't make much sense.