I'm struggling to see where my professional criticism is 'nasty' and your personal jibes aren't.

You started the personal spat by the way - you could have made a less emotive post by simply disagreeing with what I said and stating your reasons for doing so.

Exactly. It remembered me an old Bell's ROTORPROP publication (80's) about the concern about evolution of the automation and aircraft capabilities up to a point on the aircraft flight envelope above human manual handling habilities. And, if the automation fail, how the pilot will take control?
Of course I'm not raising any doubts on this crew airmanship (errors do occur and debriefings, reports, training and so on help to prevent them to occur again) neither we are flying helicopters beyond human capacity or the automation failed. Just the issue of overreliance in automation (and the concern about erosion of handflying skills in highly automated cockpits) on a very demand task have made this old article to come again.

Fully agree.
I know the pilot, and he's an excellent one. Surely with the lessons he has learned from this incident he's even better now. And we all could learn as well.
Perhaps trying to keep that excellence made him and his crew to push the limits too far.
Saying NO is the most difficult for a SAR crew, we tend to try always, and sometimes we shouldn't.

IIMC is a constant threat in the mountains in poor weather, day or night, which is why the use of escape headings is important and having a plan before you commit to the inside of a feature is equally important.

They clearly did have a plan which was a 180 out of the bowl and down the valley - something they had executed well in their previous attempts to get to the climbers.

The weather does change rapidly in such terrain and getting caught out is always possible - there is a often a second or two before you acknowledge it isn't just a little bit of random mist or low cloud that you won't pop out the other side of and that you need to take action.

Perhaps this is what happened halfway through the valley/bowl turn but it appears they climbed which may be cause or effect, only they know for sure.

Whatever the reason, they ended up in a very scary position, IMC inside a mountain feature and having to rapidly transfer from NVIS to instruments (not easy in the best of conditions).

I understand the reasons for trying to use the AFCS upper modes to help but they became a further distraction and prevented a roll out on the escape heading. Thereafter the only solution was wings level and pull power - which essentially is what they did.

ODEN - in answer to your first question they were trying to get to the climbers and would have identified the bowl feature as accessible before they went in - I presume the intention was to achieve a hover inside the feature and then assess the feasibility of a further hover-taxi up the side of the mountain.

As I mentioned before, the Bristow training team clearly thought this was a scenario worth repeating in the sim for other crews to learn from. Pilots make mistakes - it's human nature - doesn't make them bad pilots and the best pilots I know learned from their and others mistakes - you just have to be bold and honest in identifying the error and the prevention.

I get back to my earlier question....."Why were they there to begin with....if ground teams walked the hikers down off the mountain?".

Two main reasons SASless - the first is response time, If the climbers are stuck or hypothermic or slightly injured, perhaps just plain lost - their condition may worsen or they could step off a cliff.

Secondly, it is always hazardous to be on the mountain in those conditions and the mountain rescue team put themselves at risk - if that risk can be minimised or removed by using the helicopter then they are free to respond to any other calls. Even though they know the ground well it is still a bad place to be on a mountain at night in the dark with crap weather.

Crab.....you debate every thing and answer nothing sometimes.

My question was specific to this exact single event....and you threw in your tuppence trying to enlighten the unwashed or something else.

I looked at the Sat View of the area in question and noted it is not far from paved roads....has well worn trails.

The Report noted the Hikers had lights as seen by the Helicopter Crew.

It made no mention of the Hiker's condition....no mention of anything you listed in your reply.

It also indicated the Helicopter Crew contacted (or had contact made) with the MRT who THEN walked up and walked the Hikers back down safely.

Mine is a reasonable question....just as we query the problem of unnecessary EMS call outs....we should do the same with SAR Call Outs particularly those that put the Helicopter Crew in a hazardous situation.

No one seems to care about that as there did not seem to be any such questions posed in the report.

My questions are valid as the MRT "WALKED" the Hikers down....no mention of a stretcher, injury, or other reason that the SAR Helicopter was needed.

Sasless - they were there because they had been called out and asked to be there - the fact that the MRT eventually walked them down is irrelevant. That they had comms with the MRT is completely normal and it isn't unusual to have to hand the job over to MRT if the weather precludes the helicopter rescue.

Just because the climbers were walked down by MRT doesn't mean they weren't lost, scared, hypothermic or mildly incapacitated - you are reading too much into the phrase 'walked down by MRT'.

Similarly, your analysis of the terrain from the comfort of your armchair bears no relation to what they were actually experiencing on the night - my last night job in the mountains sadly ended up as a body recovery of a person who had wandered only yards off a marked trail in cloud and failing light and ended up over a 400' drop.

The short answer to your question is - they were there because they were doing their job.

I suspect that this is totally irrelevant, but this report instantly took me back some 50 or so years to a rubbish Wx, 202 Sqn callout for similar reasons. Similar initiation but in a Whirlwind 10, so NO fancy anything and the cloud was the base of a Cu Nim! They left the cloud at 12,000' - in pieces! R I P to them all - their lesson remains to be learned, it seems.

CJ - a big hand of respect to those who did mountain SAR in a Whirlwind!

I expected in the conclusion and in the safety action something about EGPWS and TAWS (switched off together with SVS) and turns "against the springs" with upper modes engaged instead of flying manually in attitude. Am I alone thinking those actions were an important factor?

is it really fit for purpose in that case?

Surely AW could come up with a software fix for that instability. I had heard that phase 4 software reduced that pitch instability a bit.

As far as I know / understand this is not a software issue but the pitch actuator is not good enough. The phase 4 software helped a bit but the AW189 still suffers with pitch instability. Don't know how much recertification if they replaced that actuator would be required but I don't think it would be easy / quick / cheap to do.

Fit for purpose you ask, well that is debatable but remember the government "stipulated" the AW189 for this contract to help keep Yeovil going, if I'm not mistaken.

not the first time that jobs at Yeovil have taken precedence over quality of procurement of UK helicopters.........ISTR they weren't actually built there, only assembled which was a bit of a con.

Strange that the 189 should have pitch instability problems where the 139 doesn't (don't know about 169) - different design of actuator perhaps?

Aw139 APs --》 Honeywell
AW189 APs --》 Agusta homemade
Completely different

Milo - I knew the software was different, is the hardware different too?

To the best of my knowledge the FCCs are different. The issues with pitch control on the AW189 can't be solved simply by "installing" a Honeywell software. In the other hand the 189 AFCS is better than the 139 one in some other aspects. Although you would prefer the latter if you are facing bad weather conditions.
However it seems that Phase 5 has improved the overall behaviour by a complete software new design... we'll see.

Thanks Milo - sounds like the Leonardo version of the Boeing 737 Max 8 - an unstable fix for an unstable aircraft:)