R-44 Down off Long Island, NY
 

Appears everyone is safe.

Looks to be a well executed autorotation to the water with pop-out floats in play after scary noises. No fuss, no muss :D

Helicopter carrying Shane McMahon makes emergency landing in waters off Gilgo Beach | abc7ny.com

Helicopter carrying WWE exec makes emergency ocean landing
 

Dupe thread...

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/597...island-ny.html

What surprises me is an R-44 was able to fit Shane McMahon let alone get airborne. The other thing that's a surprise, why rent an R-44 when he can obviously afford a corporate S76 or AW139?

Nice to see a happy ending and a big well done to the pilot and rescue teams.

👍

R

Who is Shane MacMahon when he's at home?
Why did the helo have to be out of range of the coast?
Great news that another Robbo has bitten the dust!

Internet says he weighs 230lbs. POH allows up to 300 in a seat. I've flown folks that big. You do notice it, of course ;)

Won't be the last time someone involved with World Wrestling Entertainment takes a dive :)

@gulliBell
Some people, though they have a lot of money, are still "down to Earth".

Well done to all, nice to see a good outcome from a potentially catastrophic event.

Not a pretty sight! What also surprises is that the Robbie makes a loud bang and then looses all power. We had an accident in Africa recently, starting with the same bang and ending with a botched autorotation that took 2 lives.

A Robbie has never done this on me. Wonder what could cause the "bang"?

Lousy engineering and maintenance?
Common description from those onboard if they survive and those on the ground if they don't.

It's a Robbo - what do you expect :rolleyes:

For all you Robinson bashers, a quick search of the NTSB database shows that, for 2017 to date, the following breakdown of accidents by manufacturer:

Sikorsky - 2 (11 fatalities total)
Schweizer - 3
All other types - 6 (2 fatalities total)
Hughes/MD - 8 (6 fatalities total)
Airbus/Eurocopter - 9 (1 fatality total)
Bell - 25 (20 fatalities total)
Robinson - 34 (17 fatalities total)

Bell seems to be holding its own with Robinson in the accident and fatality departments. I did this sort of quick study for a previous year and Bells actually had more accidents and fatalities than Robinsons. And yet they are one of the most respected makes. Should we not be flying Bell helicopters, either? Of course not.

I'm unable to find any data showing hours flown by each make, but it's easy to suspect that both Robinson and Bell are the busiest. Given that Robinsons do the bulk of the training in the US, that's a lot of hours doing high risk stuff. Similarly, it's easy to visualize that Bells are doing the bulk of high risk work (long line, etc.) Busy + risky = more opportunity for accidents.

If anyone had any rate based (hour normalized) statistics for the US, by make, for a recent year (modern Robinsons with modern training, not pre-SFAR 73), I'd be very interested to see them.

You probably have to put context to the aircraft type and the accident otherwise your stats are kind of irrelevant. E.g. a lot of the Bell accidents are machines doing seriously difficult work where most are the accidents are pilots flying the aircraft into the ground (e.g. Firefighting, EMS) as opposed to the aircraft themselves breaking causing the accident.

You would also need to put accidents into the context of hours flown.
I think you may find there will be fewer accidents of the other types that use the words "unexpected loss of power" or "unexplained breakup".
You have to give Robinsons their due, they have made helo flying accessible and affordable for many that would otherwise have little alternative but they have been used in ways Frank never intended.
While not relevant to this accident, the sheer number of fatal accidents that happen in seemingly mundane conditions with little explanation other than simply blaming pilot error still raises concerns.

News report says "crash"" landing should have said plop landing:O

Bell ringer - on the button!

The Robbo was cheap enough to attract "undesirables" into the industry/sport.
When you put a moderately wealthy moron behind the wheel of a sports car / fast boat / helicopter - you get the expected outcome. To quantify the statement, I am describing a minority here. I'm sure the vast majority of well to do individuals are responsible adults.

My neighbour who owns a hotel a big boat and a bentley bought an R22 - because he could. He bought it part share with his brother. He flew it home to the hotel where it was going to live and parked it on the lawn outside. Weeks later his brother rocks up makes a big fuss about his new toy and climbs into said helicopter only to find that when they are two up and at his weight (19st), the effing thing won't take off???
A blessing in disguise - methinks.
Lots of money makes some people think they can transcend certain standards/limits and do anything.

I see this phenomena as a way of purging society of moron's...........:mad:

I still have one question to ask of this case (pilot obviously not a moron): How far offshore was he and did he really need to be far enough offshore to have to EOL into the water. This could easily have ended up another tragedy.

You guys are certainly correct about lack of context in the data, however at least it can't be said that Robinsons are dropping out of the sky for any reason at a significantly higher rate than Bells.

And there's no question that lower cost of entry = lower time pilots = higher risk. Which again, speaks to the truism that it is the pilot, not the machine. Blame Robinson pilots if you wish, but don't blame the intrinsic nature of the design.

Just out of curiosity, I took another pass through the data for 2017. It would seem the Bells are indeed hard working, so to speak, while the Robinsons are much more of mixed bag, half working, half "personal/business" type stuff. Obviously there's no data as to the causes yet.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4305/...47f39ae5_o.jpg