Offshore oil & gas drifting up & back is a big no no, like Industry Insider I've never done a take-off profile like that from an offshore rig / platform in my 20+ years flying offshore oil & gas.
Onshore some aircraft have a vertical profile like that, don't know if the AW169 has that profile in its RFM.

Sky news shows day light photos from the air of the burnt out airframe, all chard except a door looking section 7-8 feet away still with paint. Looks like 2 windows, could that be a escape hatch? Never been in a 169.

I understand that in an incident like this one might well perish from the crash alone. But one might also perish from an ensuing fuel fire. I know that Robertson Fuel Systems, for one, makes fuel tanks that are more crash resistant. The Robertson tanks are available for at least some civil aircraft; I can’t tell from their website if the AW 169 is one of those. Was it available for this aircraft? Anyone here have experience or knowledge as to this type of system and its effect? If you were wealthy and owned a helicopter, would you specify such?

It looks like one of the rear sliding doors...

skadi

FWIW I've grabbed an image from Google maps and using the various photos on the news feeds identified the place (point B) where the aircraft came down. They really didn't get very far at all and would have had almost no height to play with even if they had any control. RIP.

http://i.imgur.com/MLgA6ksh.jpg

Well, if we're being pickety ..... he said 'generally' and I have done it from UMI's with no obstructions above deck, but the helideck was smaller than 1D, so there .....

Gear retracted
 

From the video immediately after the crash the gear seems to be up. The gear doors are still closed and there doesn't appear to be significant impact damage. No gear to soften the impact and no resistance to stop it spinning and flipping.

I thought there was I minimum altitude of 500' before transitioning into toward flight in residential/built up areas?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, this is the first AW169 accident. Anyone know otherwise?

airsound

Edited to add - just seen a tweet in which Leonardo Helos states just that -

You are very correct, and this is not a new observation. US Army (USAAMRL) did a very comprehensive study of aviation crashes particularly in Korean and Vietnam wars, and determined that a significant majority of the deaths were from the heat of the ensuing fire. Crashworthiness standards were created for fuel systems that do not apply to commercial rotorcraft, but have resulted in minimal loss of fuel in aircraft since the late 1970's such as H-60 and later. The movie "BlackHawk Down" would not have been a story if not for such survivability features inherent in the design. Includes for example crash resistant tanks, self-closing connections and valves for fuel systems. Some commercial helicopters include this capability, but it is not without additional cost and weight penalty. Therefore people purchasing VIP helicopters may not really be in tune to the available technology to them, nor the very real importance. I am not aware if such options are available for this model helicopter, probably not. To be sure also, we do not know details of this case, including impact velocity, which can render crashworthy systems ineffective anyway. Again, the statistical reality is that the loss of life was likely due to fire, much as an over water mishap results tragically in death by drowning.

Maybe there's several greiving families, here and in the far east, that need to be informed before you are... :ugh:

A "UAV & DRONE TRAINING PROFESSIONAL" according to my quick google search heli1!!

Cheers

TeeS

A quick look on LinkedIn shows the full details - Ex-RAF Puma/Griphon Crewman then a bunch of other stuff followed after leaving.