My feelings too. Expediency?
It seems clear they made a towering departure facing downwind, encountering a tailwind component of perhaps 15-20 Kts once they came above the shelter of the stadium roof.
That being the case I suggest that if - and I emphasise IF, a tailrotor failure occurred the scant chance of a recovery from a higher power condtion than a high hover at that height goes from scant to zip. However another more feasible scenario crosses my mind.

It would be very useful to know about the tail rotor authority/control characteristics of this type in high power, downwind conditions at a representative weight. Anyone familiar on type care to comment?

It seems to me that the combination of a sudden onset downwind exposure followed by a spiralling, out of control descent is perhaps more likely to be relevant than the highly unlikely coincidence of a t/r failure just at that critical point. This followed by a rapid dump of the collective in an attempt to recover Nr would fit with an eyewitness reporting a gear-crunching noise (I paraphrase) - perhaps blade stall - followed by relative silence as pitch is reduced.

I can easily visualise a scenario where a tailwind surprises you at 300ft, high power and downwind with the result we've all seen. A bootful of pedal to stop the yaw, a natural grab at the lever to curb the suddden descent and all of a sudden you're spinning, overpitched, Nr plummeting...

I hope to hell this doesn't turn out to be another pressonitis event like Battersea or Gillingham but I'm not holding my breath.

Any input on that downwind tail rotor authority?

Whatever the cause this accident is so in the public eye that helicopters in general are taking vast amounts of abuse (ignorant abuse but damaging nonetheless) in the media and net. If we are unlucky ths sort of hysteria could well lead to irrational knee-jerk reactions similar to those that all but destroyed vintage jet displays and virtually eradicated inland airshows altogether after Shoreham. I sincerely hope my fears are unfounded.

My other feeling is that some of the TV coverage of their departure seems to end rather abruptly. I'd expect the camera to keep rolling until the helo had disappeared from sight so there may well be good, high definition video of the event in the hands of the authorities. Equally I'd be astonished if there are not several amateur videos from outside the stadium that haven't seen the light yet. They may well help.

And they were partners as mentioned in the press below. Eric was also an examiner was well as a pilot.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/760112...naprabha-dead/

BBC inacurate as always Izabela is a Pilot not just a passenger
 

Eric Swaffer was a respected Jet and Heli pilot and Izabela Lechowicz was a Pilot and instructor if any one has BBC contacts please can they get them to show the respect a fellow aviator deserves not to be listed as a passenger. Of course the BBC dont allow comments on some of their posts. Sad day for business aviation when it loses two professionals at work....

Not a failure of the transmission as such, but a sudden failure to transmit power to the TR for whatever reason i.e. a disconnect somewhere in the drive train. A disconnect can happen for any number of various reasons. There are of course a few other possible causes for loss of direction control.

I'm curious why the take-off procedure commenced from the middle of the pitch, leaving usable take-off path behind the aircraft (not-withstanding backing up slightly during the initial ascent).

Dibdab, the way I read it, this flight it was single crew, making the person in the left hand seat not part of the operating crew, if she was I might have concerns. The fact she is an accomplished fixed wing pilot in her own right has no bearing on this flight, if she is not part of the crew component she is listed as PAX, hence that is the way the police will have listed her.

Agreed. If the helicopter is rapidly spinning the pilot no longer has any meaningful directional control with cyclic. You pretty much just arrive at the scene of the accident. All the pilot can do is with the collective control, lower to preserve NR until impact is imminent and then full pull at the bottom, and shutting down the engines at some point before then.

The emphasis in the BBC news report on "Passenger" in notable, not used for the other occupants. I wonder if this term came from the AAIB, as I have encountered them emphasising "Passenger" in another situation.

Was she in uniform ? The Sun newspaper has a photo of the two of them together in a flight deck in uniform.

I've had a loss of TR at night in a (very) high hover in a twin, single pilot: it is survivable with quick reactions and a set of spread crosstubes. I'm unable to find the confirmation of wind direction to sustain the comments about a downwind component to the take off, can anyone verify this please? If that is the case then could there be a LTRE involved when leaving the stadium?

To the earlier comments about back up departures, these have been common for well over 40 years and were part of some operators' SOPs in the North Sea back in the 70s. One well known S61N operator even had that departure as a requirement from the Shetland main runway!

For those unaware of the safety criteria for such a departure it is to ensure the return to the departure point in the event of a rejected T/O before TDP, after which sufficient height is available to transition into Vtoss and climb away. Comments about the stadium being not suitable/unusual/etc would be those not exposed to the full range of helicopter operations throughout their flying careers.

JE, on this rare occasion I don't agree with you on that point. If this had become a routine on-going operation I think there was something broken in the approvals process that permitted it. Take a car ride instead - 5/10/15/20 minutes or whatever by road - and meet the helicopter somewhere other than inside the confines of a public event at a stadium.

Rapid dump of collective is entirely consistent pilot response to sudden TR drive failure, primarily to reduce rate of rotation and not so much to preserve NR (when the TR drive lets go shifts all the power availability to the MR and none to the TR).
Gear crunching noise has nothing to do with blade stall and (more likely) everything to do with a broken TR drive shaft flailing around or a TRGB or IGB grinding itself to pieces.
Relative silence not because pitch is reduced, more likely because of pilot actioned engine shut down following TR drive failure.
I do agree however that the wind direction may be a critical factor in what happened here, and struggle with the thought that sudden TR drive failure happened at the worst possible moment.

Can someone confirm if this was a single pilot flight or was the girlfriend a rated copilot. I would think a rated copilot would be required and have their hands on the throttles for this kind of takeoff to insure that there would be an immediate reduction of the throttles in case of a TRF.

The chances of meeting this same helicopter,as in a crash, if one had elected to go by car, must be next to Zero ! I am no expert on Rotary Ops,but I was just surrounded by a few that are and they are in agreement that this will likely uncover serious shortcomings and that many malfunctions could have been dealt with if this departure was operated from a pad that ticked all of the boxes. On 1 Caveat that it will not turn out to be "Catostrophic Failure. Even then,I am sure that this particular Operation will be terminated in the future. Not sure when a helicopter last crashed on to a car on the road system.( when it has lots of Altitude to its advantage). I vaguely knew one of the casualties that died in the helicopter that crashed DOWN in London some years ago ! Rotary Flying surely must also have the IMMEDIATE departure and arrival CONE as the point of maximum danger and risk ? As a non-expert,I need to be convinced that the same result would have occured if this helicopter had lifted from a wide open space,as opposed to the bottom of a bucket ! ( Not my Invention of terminology). Sorry,but that is the area/phase that bothers me and those who have now gone home ! Anyway,I will follow it with interest...

Definitely not.

gullibell

I don't disagree with your statement #136 but I really wonder how much time anyone has in such an event to think of shutting down the engines - let alone actually doing it. The whole event took scant seconds, there just isn't enough time to do these things, surely? Anyway the infinitessimal statistical chance of a t/r failure occurring at that critical moment is so vanishinglky unlikely that we should really be thinking of more prosaic reasons for the accident.

I restate lhe possibility of LTRE as we know they transitioned up onto a fairly strong tailwind tht possiblt struck suddenly with all the ramifications that includes. This is surely vastly more likely to be the cause of an accident than an exceptionally unlikely yet co-incidental tail rotor failure?

What does scare me is the possibiity - indeed the likelyhood that this accident will do to helo ops what Shorerham did to airshows and vintage jet displays as the CAA is cowed by self-imposed paranoia and meeja pressure to "Do Something".
The levels of ignorant, unnformed and plain vindictive misinformatuon about helicopters being bandied about on news sites and the interweb
is breathtaking.
We should be very aware of this lest we live to regret just lying down and taking it in the future.

I ask again, AW169 experienced pilots please tell us about t/r authority in a significant tailwind.

Fair call if it was a full (or partially full) stadium, but photos and videos seem to indicate that the helicopter movement(s) were out of an empty ground? Even the car parks outside seem devoid of crowds, but I accept that regular ops can instill a degree of complacency to risk management. There is a fine balance to be made, and where would be considered a suitable alternative without a long drive for the owner of the machine? Many, if not most, wealthy owners buy their helicopters for convenience and time savings; introducing car transfers can soon reduce the convenience factor and the appeal of a private helicopter.

Thankfully, the169 is fitted with FDR / CVR. Hope they're intact.

TR drive failure leaves you in absolute no doubt what malfunction you are dealing with, and the required response to that comes with training and practice and should be instinctive, and needs virtually no amount of thinking. There is always time to lower the collective as the first step. Height determines what time you have available to shut down the engines. It doesn't take long to shut down 2 engines, just need to rotate 2 switches i.e. just a few seconds. Height is also the key factor in the outcome. If you have height and your auto-rotations are OK you're in with a fighting chance. If you don't have height the outcome becomes less pilot skill dependent, you're just going to arrive at the scene of the accident very quickly without many choices in the matter. And yes, you might not have time to shut down the engines (the reason you must shut down the engines is to prevent rapid spinning immediately prior to ground contact when collective application is required to reduce rate of descent).

A sudden loss of TR drive without prior indications is exceedingly rare, I only know of one previous instance (B412 in Gulf of Mexico, it rolled inverted but the crew had height to do something about it, and nothing at the bottom to crash into except open water).

The flip side is a loss of directional control caused by something other than a TR control/drive problem which is mis-diagnosed as a TR drive malfunction (this happened in China recently). Unlikely in this instance given the experience of the pilot.

Actually we really don't need to think about any reasons for the accident at this point. Anything we might say is just speculation.

That generalization does not take into account pprune precedent re such matters.

Can you please expand on that? Is it not a good idea to have a set of hands on the throttles for that maneuver? Was a pax in the other front seat or was a helicopter rated pilot in the other front seat? I can't see why a complex twin like that would not have 2 highly trained pilots flying, especially in and out of a highly visible confined area, at night with VIP's.

There is no malfunction in a helicopter that requires an immediate shutdown of an engine, so having a set of hands on an engine control during a flight maneuver is pointless. Whether the crew comprises one or 2 pilots is equally a RFM and regulatory matter. If either requires it, it's required. If only one pilot is required it then becomes the choice of the operator or client whether a 2nd pilot is carried. Having a 2nd pilot on board when a 2nd pilot is not required is extra weight which is unhelpful if you are performance limited. Having a crew of 2 pilots at night is operationally sensible...but I'd rather have the performance to zoom out of a tight spot rather than the extra weight of a 2nd pilot. Tell the boss he has to drive somewhere else and have the helicopter meet him there, rather then struggle out of a confined area...even if you could zoom out of a confined area OEI at night I'd be inclined to suggest the boss to take that drive.

In this instance, my guess, having a 2nd pilot onboard would have had little bearing on the outcome.

I know that I should not bother, but people have lost their lives in this accident and still there are idiots that write crap like the following:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ans-curve.html

1. He may have been caught in a 'dead man's curve' - a dangerous situation even for experienced pilots
2. A dead man's curve is when the aircraft flies too slowly and at too low an altitude to shut down the engines

Sorry to digress a little in this thread.

Reminds me of an accident in 2005 which can been seen on Youtube - search under "Helicopter Crash at Stadium a Bell 206 Twin Ranger Chopper Crashes in Bullfighting Ring Madrid Spain".

I may have missed it in earlier posts - but have there been any comments as to what the wind was like around the stadium at the time?

Experienced pilot experienced with the mission, modern helicopter with all the latest technology. Occam's Razor (that good monk from Surrey) would suggest nothing mechanical "failed". The backup profile is related to PC1 and only addresses an engine failure (statistically insignificant) but nevertheless an airline industry mantra for regulators to focus on. And in itself it isn't harmful if you have bags of power and unless you back into something. A statistician might argue that the extended exposure and resultant velocity in the wrong direction negates any possible benefit of maintaining a reject area in view, but the Jim Lyons of the world have already beat this one to death. Likewise a tail rotor failing in a modern aircraft is statistically not a factor. I don't know the tailwind limitations of a 169, but design criteria is usually 30 knots, and the same pilot was just in and coming back out, so no unknowns there. I've flown out of stadiums, they are large, well-lit, and with good references, my idea of low risk. The AAIB does excellent work and will methodically arrive at a cause in good time - it is unfortunate that they still get so many accidents like this to investigate.

Yep - very puzzling accident.
Clearly a highly experienced pilot apparently operating to SOPs - LTRE wouldn't seem to be a factor.
An almost brand new and very sophisticated machine - that one would assume was impeccably maintained.
Could there have been some sort of one off assembly or manufacturing fault that caused a catastrophic drive shaft or gearbox failure?
But then you'd think there'd be multiple independent checks of components at time of assembly?
Very strange...

I don't have anything to add on this sad accident itself (I agree that it is somewhat baffling at this stage - but I'm sure this very modern aircraft was equipped with all sorts of recorders that will yield useful input to the investigation) but, not living in the UK, I muss confess that I am surprised that this sort of operation would be allowed on what seems to be regular basis.
Is it really possible to get authorisation to land your helicopter pretty much wherever you want ? I would have thought that one would need to use designated helipads ?
I am not implying anything here - just curious about what the regulations are.

North and north easterly winds here in the Midlands so lifting out with a tailwind crosswind across the top of the stadium?
And what are those metal triangle structures above the stadium, could they have struck tail rotor on one of those?
The tail rotor looks relatively intact, barely spinning on ground contact, but the tips have caught something.

We know that P1 was a FI(H) but there are questions to be asked about the role of the occupancy of the pax in the left hand seat?

(a) As all ready mentioned was she in a pilot's uniform, if so why?
(b) Under public transport operations would the collective and control column not be removed from the left hand side?
(c) Was this in anyway an instructional flight, to which the owner was not aware?
(d) Why would this flight not be operated at all times to public transport standards and with a two man (person) crew?

In respect of bigendbob, the possibility of lifting out from the stadium in still air and transitioning into a tailwind really does raise the possibility of the aircraft striking the roof structure. No doubt engineers will inspect this soon and give us a better idea of what happened.

Izabela Lechowicz was a fixed wing pilot (Gulfstream 450/550) not a rotary. I think the media are jumping on the fact that she was a pilot and assuming she was a co pilot on this flight.

From the bystander videos, the flood-lit compound is a walk-though on match days, linking the main car park with the staff car park. It appears that there were no cars parked there.
The portable flood light was on and remains beside the wreckage.

The compound is a split level of approx 2 feet, with a low wall separating the two levels.
The tail rotor with gearbox separated and is on the upper level, a few feet to the right of the tail which appears to have impacted the low wall.

The video shows the two policemen did their best with a 1.5Kg extinguisher and bare hands, god bless them.

The compound appears to be the clearest spot for some distance, it is surrounded by occupied car parks, a treed reserve, and industrial buildings.

Mjb

East Mids nearest to Leicester.

EGNX 272120Z 34011KT 9999 BKN025 04/00 Q1019=
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EGNX 272020Z 34011KT 9999 BKN025 04/M01 Q1018=
EGNX 271950Z 35011KT 9999 BKN025 04/M00 Q1018=
EGNX 271920Z 34011KT 9999 BKN026 04/M00 Q1018=
EGNX 271850Z 36008KT 320V040 9999 BKN028 05/00 Q1018=

Cold evening so just a few hundred feet up wind could be 20 kts plus.

Here we go again in the press... Hero pilot steers helicopter away from crowds/city/hotel/school
"Witnesses said...."

An Army parachutist told me they hated doing display jumps into stadiums because of wind shear.