Well in this case it appears he might have.

Would be interesting if the club has a model of the stadium, then the AAIB could put it in a wind tunnel and see the effects of wind shear across the top of the stadium.

The triangles are the cantilever supports for the roof - means a clear sightline for spectators

1. You mean, can the main rotor stop/seize in flight? Yes, and if it does the main rotor head with blades attached will shear off and fly away to wherever they end up. So in this instance not applicable.
2. Yes. For example, TR servo fail to full extension/retraction will cause it to spin one way or the other (very unlikely however, the other servo would probably need to have an undetected internal leak as well).

Its been going on for years , although I believe now stopped in the airline world - Loganair Twin Otters around Scotland had " Pilots assistant" for years. The KingAir 200 was another in the VIP world. I have flown 2 crew in a Navajo PA31 because the customer insisted on it ( The other "pilot" was a passenger). there are lots of examples.

Firstly I'm merely a recreational S300C Pilot, who only once could experience a Cat-A takeoff demonstration during someone's EC135 rating renewal. (of course during daylight, at an airfiled)
I can't help but challenge the departure. I would have recommended/conducted
a) a vertical towering take off at the farthest possible place of the stadium so that the "Cat-A emergency path in front of me" would be as long as possible,
b) and of course from a position where the vertical takeoff would render the AC in headwind, once above stadium height..
Reasons:
Climbing vertically, the necessary amount of attitude change to "emergency nose down" is less than when being in the nose up "climb backwards portion" of a CAT-A dep.
Being at the farthest possible downwind position at takeoff would give me the longes possible headwind emergency escape.

Pls point out any errors in my "suggested" stadium takeoff.

I have some points to throw into the pot. I don't mean to imply they have any relevance to this accident but are perhaps useful while everyone is thinking TR. Many years ago I lost drive to the TR in an A109 Mk1. I was in the cruise at 5,000' when it went. Here are the things I learned …

• Although I instantly and without a doubt knew what it was, I found it hard to shake off (I'm talking fractions of a second here) the parallel conviction that I had somehow caused it and that there might be an action I could take that would reverse it. It ultimately turned out to be a crystalline fracture that originated during manufacture, so that obviously wasn't the case.
• I'd been filming at low level and low speed all day over the Isle of Skye but fate (good fate) dictated that it sheared in forward flight; when the big fin of the 109 would have put the TR at minimum stress.
• My usually appalling memory speeded up to a level it's never operated at before or since. In a handful of seconds I recalled, processed and prioritised literally every piece of paper and conversation I'd ever been exposed to about tail rotors. If you'd asked me to recall most of them ten minutes earlier I couldn't have done it. It's all buried in there somewhere!
• I had the luxury of experimenting with this new flying machine for over 25 minutes during my descending transit to Teeside airport for a running landing. During that time I realised I was going to run out of hands at the critical moment. I therefore had to train my left seat passenger, a film producer, to shut down the engines from the overhead panel when I called for it. Thankfully he was a good learner as there was no way I could have taken my left hand off the collective at that moment.
• Final tip - the speed at which the nose swung through the runway heading when the throttles were chopped defied belief. I had allocated 10 feet as the chop height, in reality left it until 5 feet, and still only just had time to get it down onto the tarmac before it had swung too far to avoid a roll-over.

In the end, if I'm honest, there was an awful lot of luck involved.

Another thing that amazes me while reading the posts in this thread are the numerous suggestions the a/c ended up in tailwind once it cleared the stadium walls.
These clearly can only be wrong speculations. Would one consider any takeoff, being towering or Cat-A, that has the a/c end up in tailwind after the climb, gross neglect?
Given the crew's reputation I can't imagine any condition, that would have them choose a climb into tailwind, or am I just a PPL(H) missing something?

I'd like to think so, but the reality of sudden TR drive failure at 200' with high power and low airspeed, and at night, the world outside starts spinning at such a rate that you can't comprehend what's outside, and you have no sensible directional control of the helicopter, and no amount of conscious effort will head you where you might wish to go. You just arrive at the scene of the accident wherever the course of events takes you. Even the most skilled pilot almost becomes a passenger. The best you can hope for is to drop the collective to the floor, shut off the engines, apply collective when ground contact is imminent, and do your best to keep it upright with cyclic. You most certainly will not be able to steer it in any direction of choice if it is spinning all the way down. If you have height and speed in your favor then you have more options.

One would assume it would spin downwind, as looks in this case.
Or would point of failure cause a resonance or bias as it pitches up and down.

You'd only do it with a tail wind if you had a significant power margin, and the direction of take-off afforded you the lowest obstacle that needed to be cleared. And even then, I'd be doing it into wind (and in any event the RFM prohibits the Ground Level Back-up Take Procedure with a tail wind component).

The police do not normally report the names of fatalities until next of kin have been informed. For this to happen, there needs to be positive identification. Press reports say that the fire took 20 minutes to put out. In these circumstances, identification would have been challenging.
RIP

Not really. The passenger manifest is sufficient. Positive identification in all likelihood wouldn't have happened yet.

To my untrained eye that TR looks like it's whacked something whilst under power.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....48c27acda7.png

The usual suspects are making statements of certainty already.....as is their habit...despite knowing nothing of what caused the accident.

Would you rocking chair experts give it a rest and at least have the courtesy to stipulate that you are working off pure fantasy.

Perhaps ya'll might just put a sock in it until some real facts are provided where by you might begin to have a reasonable basis for your conjecture.

Yes....this is pprune but even that does not excuse some of the posts being. made.

There was unlikely to have been a requirement for a passenger manifest.

Do you really for one second imagine that there was a pax manifest for that flight? Private VVIP transfer involving no international element? I'd be utterly stunned if there was any kind of manifest. There might be a trail of emails before the flight with the proposed pax list but as to who actually turns up and gets on? It can be anybody's guess. Just shove em in and go.

I'm not saying it's right but I am saying that it's the way it is for the vast majority of private / corporate helicopter flights in UK.