Another Robinson crash
 

The pilot killed was a very well respected member of the canadian helicopter industry. She will be sorely missed and condolences to all her friends and family. I personally did not know her but I have several friends grieving... :( :(

Would you mind PMing me her name? I'm just hoping it's not who I think it is.

Name hasn’t been released yet, previously worked at STARS in Grand Prairie and Highland.

Not sure why this thread needs to be titled as “another” by some Robinson-bashing cretin. Lots of 44’s flying with a reputation in the industry (outside of pprune) as good helicopters.

Probably because Since 1982, there have been at least 512 deaths in 291 Robinson crashes worldwide..

Does seem a touch high. figures shamelessly googled.

Safer than riding a Motorbike I guess

Condolences to all concerned

3305 Bell UH1 variants were destroyed during the Vietnam war (figures shamelessly Googled). Does seem a touch high.

As Disraeli put it. Lies. Damn lies.... And statistics.

In the US, currently a similar number of Bells and Robinsons are crashing each year. Of course, there are more of each than any other type, so that skews the stat's. And, no doubt the Bells are doing more challenging stuff like long line work, and Robinsons are doing more challenging stuff like primary instruction. And, with the operating costs so low, no doubt the Robinsons are being flown by people with a lot less experience (myself included), which also skews the stat's.

Given that this latest event may involve someone with a lot of experience, perhaps it is the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless, with all of the design improvements since the original 22's and 44's were launched, and SFAR 73, it's getting awfully hard to blame the machine itself as the root of all evil nowadays. That said, there are still a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth from an earlier time in the evolution of the Robinson designs, some who have personally lost someone dear to them, and we'll hear from them loudly whenever a Robinson goes down, regardless of the cause.

Regardless of whether you think Robinsons are "death machines" or not, there is no question they have made rotary wing flight available and accessible to many more people than would otherwise be the case, and I personally know many Robinson pilots who happily fly a Robinson rather than not fly at all.

The thing is, when evaluating the merits of the machine, is to eliminate the pilots from the equation.

IOW how many crashes caused by the design/manufacture and not the pilot or maintenance?

There is a suggestion that some RH blades have failed catastrophically in flight when operated in accordance with best practice (no low g, no high speed into turbulence etc). If there are a number of those then we have a problem.

We will compare with new basic trainers:


https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase...hp?AcType=G2CA

One occupant survived the crash and was extracted from wreckage, so presumably there was no fire.

It is so unfortunate that the improved crash worthiness version of the fuel system took as long as it did to be implemented.

Mjb

The number of crashes per hours flown expressed as a percentage of the total hours flown by each manufacturers fleet would be an interesting comparison, but I’m shamelessly too lazy to google it.

Helisweet - the interesting statistic from all those Guimbal accidents was zero fatalities, I assume that was your point of comparison to the Robinsons.

There are also a few that are students losing the tail while near the ground, probably struggling with the fenestron.

The name is out now.

Karen Coulter.

I never met her, but tough loss regardless.

RIP

I would expect there to be more incidents with Robinson's than most other manufacture simply because of the numbers.

Slagging off Robinson for killing and burning many might be an acceptable issue if there was a similar thread highlighting the killing capabilities of the AS350/H125 series [and quite a few other legacy types].

The manufacturer of the AS350 spent a great deal of time and trouble enhancing the safety of their 40 years old design - so much so that the added safety was [is] effectively delivering the passengers to a funeral pyre. The timescale of those improvements is such that many crews that would have died in many an accident are, thanks to stroking seats and other improvements, now being killed by post-crash fire.

Putting right what may be the last detail - the creation of a crashworthy fuel tank - has taken 40 years. Far longer than Robinson has been an issue.

It may be that this 'final solution' for the AS350 will simply highlight another legacy killer in the design. For that we need to wait.

The difference is about what is causing the crash - in the Robinsons there is still a higher proportion of mid-air breakups than any other make.

Which other make has such a history of rotor separation, MR to tail boom strikes and in-flight breakup?

If you are dead before you hit the ground then crashworthiness becomes irrelevant.

Crab
I m no Robinson fan but the Super Puma must be neck and neck with the Robinson

not following this thread, but as I just read the article in this link, I might as well post it here:
Robinson crash injures four at the Namur aerodrome in Temploux (Belgium) - Aviation24.be

Hughes500 - I know what you mean but it is the number of crashes to produce the high level of fatalities that is the poor Robinson stat - the Super Puma manages to achieve a high body count with far fewer accidents.

Copied nearly verbatim from my post on this in another thread back in July 2017...

For all you Robinson bashers, a quick search of the NTSB database shows that, for 2017 through the end of July (the last time I looked at the stat's), the following breakdown of accidents by manufacturer occurred:

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, at least in the US (can't speak to worldwide). I did this sort of quick study for 2016 and Bells actually had more accidents and fatalities than Robinsons in the US. 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 other types 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, and all the latest AD's and SB's complied with, and definitely not pre-SFAR 73), I'd be very interested to see them.

Let's unpack this a bit.
Both Bell and Robinson had 11 Fatal accidents totalling 27 fatalities for Bell and 20 for Robbie up until 1 October.
These are global stats.

Now the Bell's have higher seating capacity with 1 accident taking 9 lives in a 412, as an example. This does skew the "facts" a little.
What is more relevant are that the Bell accidents are generally commercial in nature including rescue services and photography, a number of these are CFIT.

The Robbie accidents are more recreational or light commercial work. The majority are described as impacting terrain in VMC. The impact being a result of an unplanned/unexpected loss of altitude.

CFIT accidents you'd expect during high risk ops. Falling out the sky for no apparent reason during relatively mundane ops is something wholly different.

Robinson would always have you believe it's pilot error, that just seems a bit of a cop out. You can sing the praises of that little tin-can deathtrap but the reality is that it continues to cull pilots and and often good-ones at that.

Bell ringer - :ok::ok::ok: it is ALL about context, simple numbers don't give the true picture as you have shown.

Bell_ringer: where can I read about the details of each one of these incidents to that I can come to these same conclusions? Is there a single database that I can enter into for this information?

Bell_ringer unpacked it pretty good. The B412 prang mentioned I think was in Indonesia, pilot flew into a mountain in bad weather. A completely different scenario to Robinson helicopters falling out of 8/8ths of blue sky. I'm not sure what sort of conclusions @aa777888 might come to from closer examination of accident data, or the purpose in doing this. From my perspective, I'm perfectly happy to fly a B206, B212, B412 or any other Bell helicopter. No way would you get me in any flavour of Robinson helicopter.

I fly a 44 because its all I can afford. I've been in some awfully rough air, and just slowed down. I have, however, been pretty damn scared a couple of times when a passenger has bumped the cyclic, trying to take a picture, or get to their cell phone or whatever. If I'd had a little looser grip on the pole I think I'd be dead. I wonder how many of the inexplicable smooth clear air disintegrations are due to that?

Given the dual controls in Robinson helicopters are so easy to remove, why not remove them when flying said cyclic bumping passengers?

They are always removed when I fly. Passengers still bump the cyclic. They also drop their damn cell phones on the emergency beacon switch.


But the question is, do people think cyclic bumping may be leading to mast bumping?

Bellringer has added a useful synopsis to this ongoing debate, but I would need to see the raw data and his analytical methodology before agreeing or disagreeing

All that matters is the number of fatal accidents - the number of deaths is due to aircraft capacity and multiple other factors, but a fatal accident is an accident with an impact speed that can kill

I am not sure I care if I die in a commercial or a 'light commercial' accident. I am still dead. The important issue is was it pilot error or aircraft malfunction.

So how many fatal accidents were clearly NOT pilot error? That is all that matters, for that determines the safety or otherwise of the aircraft, not the pilot

I feel safer in a turbine, and safer still in a twin, but I cant afford more than a Robbie for much of my flying. I sit on the fence - there does seem to be an issue with mast bumping BUT is it due to failure to slow down...... in other words if I am a careful driver am I more at risk in a Robbie?

I dont think we have the evidence one way or the other

Cyclic bumping
 

Gator,

Yes, I strongly suspect that many of the mast bumping incidents in Robinson are related to the cyclic being knocked out of the pilots hands by a passenger knocking the centre post.

It's only happened to me once, by a friends wife sat beside me trying to point a scenery... we were in the mountains on a beautiful sunny evening, so you can imagine how the accident report would have read...

Despite the common doctrine for a two finger grip for fine control movements these days the cyclic gets a somewhat firmer grip from me.

CRAN

At some point in the risk/reward spectrum things start to get a little silly. Hell, why leave the ground at all?

For me it's fly what I can (barely) afford, or not fly. For most people that choice is going to come down on the side of flying.

I will be the first to agree that pistons are not as reliable as turbines, that 3 blades are better than 2, that high inertia is better than low inertia, and that bladder tanks are better than no bladder tanks. And I agree that the list of Robinson AD's and SB's tells a story. But that story is now well evolved, and other than the recent uptick in apparent, overly fast, turbulence penetrations in lightly loaded R66's, modern stat's don't seem to say that there is a dramatic problem with flying these machines if they are flown within their specified limits to any greater extent than other machines.

That said, I'd still really like to take a look at the raw data the Bell_ringer alludes to, if someone can point me at it. The FAA data I see does not cause me to draw conclusions that Robinsons "simply fall out of the sky" at any greater rate than other makes, i.e. other makes "simply fall out of the sky" as well.

Cran: yep. I was in the snake river canyon with a guy who did it three times trying to take pictures. After the second time, I decided if he did it again I'd give him a ride. He didn't do it the fourth.


As you point out, the accident report would have said "loss of control due to turbulence in mountainous area".


I think there is a psychological tic at work here. We believe we can avoid CFIT, wires, clouds, and survive EOL. Just like when a guy dies of lung cancer, we all think "whew, he was a smoker, I'm not, I'll be ok"


But nobody thinks they can survive the 44 falling out of the sky for no reason. So that puts a whole different light on flying one of the things.


I think as long as you slow down in bad turbulence, they fall out of the sky because somebody bumps the damn center post. Its a lot more vulnerable than a joystick. And I feel better about flying them through that bit of psychological trickery.

R66
 

The SFAR and associated SB and ADs have raised awareness for sure.

I’ve got to say, I hate flying our R66 one-up and low fuel. I dropped some pax the other month and headed off 15mins each way for fuel. It was a hot day, a bit thermally and I found myself pulling about 35% and flying at 90kts. I’ve spoken to blokes pulling max continuous one-up and being near VNE, but I just don’t think it’s good airmanship in that machine.

Like some others on here, RHC has allowed a cost effective introduction to rotary flight, and especially so into turbines. I love the machine and think it’s real capable. But the mast bumping issue isn’t a myth, so why take any chances?

Think I’m gonna duct tape my passengers’ arms to their sides from now on!

FF

If a machine has a Vne then you should be able to operate it (with due allowance for the Density Altitude on the day using the RFM) up to that figure, without having to take special care or avoid light turbulence in case it falls apart.

If the helo is unsafe at those speeds then the certification was wrong and the Vne and Vno should be revised downwards accordingly.

Of course that doesn't make Robinsons as competitive or attractive as the opposition so doubtless much pressure was exerted on the FAA to accommodate the certification - perhaps like SAC and the S-92's very remote likelihood of oil loss from the MRGB.

Yellow arc now added to ASI with mandatory reduction in VNE in turbulent conditions, but I take your point.

I hope to be in something more substantial before long, but I will steadfastly refrain from badmouthing the Robbies.

I think when first certified the inherently more pronounced risk of mast bumping in the lighter and more powerful R66 was not necessarily a known quantity.

While I am occasionally a bit trite about the Robinsons, I endeavour to be constructive.
Ultimately what you find yourself flying is not within your control and a matter of circumstance, so the debate is largely academic.
Just remain aware, and ahead, of the foibles of whichever machine you find yourself in.

I have a couple of thousand hours in the R22 and maybe 700 in the R44. Recently I have found myself becoming very uncomfortable flying either of them. Not sure why.
I feel they don't help themselves by putting blade fixes on Youtube. I simply have no idea how any corporate lawyer approved that and then the latest VNE restriction placard doesn't really do anything other than give Robinson an out in a lawsuit."Oh, it must have been too windy and the pilot exceeded VNE. Prove otherwise. Thanks."
Mickey mouse fixes and nothing else.

The accident rate doesnt scare me in the Robbies, it is the specific examples of high time Robbie pilots having inflight break-ups that scares the crap out of me. It is always blamed on the pilot, but when a design feature causes a great deal of pilot error, then it is the designs fault and not the pilots fault. Look at the Guimbal and compare accident rates to the Robbies. The difference for the same role is astounding.

why the hell not? It makes a laughing stock of the certification process which is supposed to ensure the aircraft is airworthy.

Where can that data be found for inspection? I'm interested in looking at it.