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Newsmagazine reports, that the autopilot pushed the helicopter nose down and went offline.
The crew had no chance to regain control before overstress caused blades to disintegrate.
The autopilot was wrong programmed, not knowing wether it was Airbus or the Bundeswehr, who set up the Autopilot.
The fault wasn´t found in other tiger helicopters but restrictions have been implemented to prevent further accidents
Articel in German:
"Tiger"-Hubschrauber: Falsch eingestellter Auto-Pilot leitete Sturzflug ein - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Tiger crash in Mali explained | defenceWeb

The crash of a German military Airbus Tiger helicopter in Mali last July was caused by incorrect settings on the autopilot, Germany’s Spiegel Online reported.

The helicopter crashed while flying a peacekeeping mission in the West African nation’s desert north, killing both crew members

Spiegel Online said the Defence Ministry informed the parliamentary defence committee about the findings on Tuesday.

It said the autopilot controlled the aircraft’s elevator. It remained unclear who programmed the settings on the autopilot software, not found on any other Tiger helicopters.

Spiegel Online cited a report from the Defence Ministry as saying the autopilot flew the helicopter sharply lower, leaving the pilots no chance to manually take the aircraft higher again.

Elevator („Hoehenruder“)? Do we have such in a Tiger?

And what does this mean:

Quote:

Bei dem betroffenen "Tiger", so der neue Bericht, sei der "normalerweise verfügbare Steuerweg in der Nickachse" allerdings erheblich eingeschränkt gewesen. Folglich steuerte der Autopilot mit dem "Steuerausschlag ganz vorne" in einen "unkontrollierten steilen Sturzflug".

What is „normalerweise verfügbarer Steuerweg“? Normally available control travel?

Loosely translated: Available control travel around the pitch axis was restricted. Hence, autopilot gave full nose down input.

Has this to do with ‘envelope protection’? Like as if under normal conditions full FRW or full AFT control input of cyclic (or whatever elevator a Tiger has) only translated to minor nose down, or nose up response? And maybe at the mishap moment an alternate control law being in effect, which mapped full cyclic control input to equally full ‘elevator deflection’? And finally, the autopilot not being aware of the alternate law in force?

How does this all work?