Enstrom F28 crashes at Pennsylvania fairground
 

What do you have an issue with? An Enstrom giving rides, or an Enstrom flying at night?

Night passenger flights / charter (in our land) requires a twin, with an instrument-rated pilot. So it doesn't happen, too darned expensive.

Some operators got around it by calling it a "photographic flight", and some even used to issue the pax with a disposable camera (in the bad old days where a thing called "film" was inside the camera).

Well, ok

Then the answer is yes, an Enstrom is a perfectly acceptable aircraft for giving rides at the fair after dark.

The Enstrom is perfectly suited to these operations, in accordance with the regulations in effect where it was being operated. Assuming, of course, that night VFR conditions existed at that time and place, which appears to be the case.

At the risk of committing the ultimate PPRuNe faux pas, which is to blithely state the cause of an accident merely by reading a single, random news report, it nevertheless seems rather unlikely that this incident has anything to do with night VFR sightseeing operations except incidentally, and is much more likely a result of either a mechanical issue, or a perhaps a wire strike, the latter based on the wires evident in the background of the photo in the news article. I.e. I don't believe that the pilot in question had any visibility problems, nor problems flying by visual references alone, nor was subject to any spatial disorientation.

I've been involved in these sorts of ride concession operations recently, and my three biggest safety focus areas, in no particular order, are a) wires and other obstacles, b) loading/unloading passenger safety and c) super-sized passengers, the latter being a serious issue in "'Merica". Indeed, with regard to the latter, in combination with confined space operations, I've waived off more than one load until they can either a) be split up or b) my fuel state goes under 1/4 tank (this is in an R44). Even at only a 1/4 tank, that puts the passenger per seat average right around 225 to 250 lbs, depending on the aircraft and pilot weight. The operator generally sets an absolute max. of 250 even though the book says 300 is OK (seat crash worthiness limit) for that very reason. Thankfully, actual and density altitudes around here are near sea level, especially this time of year (Fall), which is agricultural fair season in the U.S., so that does help.

Night restrictions don't just exist because of risks related to visual references, there is also much higher risk to a forced landing.
Enstrom's don't have the best reliability reputation, and while the brotherhood of pistonage will profess their absolute reliability, night work should be in turbine aircraft with better performance.
The only reason a piston is ever used in this type of role is cost, and cost rarely involves the safest option.

Wow. I won't come right out and say that Bell_ringer's post is idiotic, but it comes as close to it as anything I've ever read here or on the "bad" JH board.

That said, has anyone ever witnessed these "fair rides?" I can't speak for the Enstrom operator in Pennsylvania, but when there's a County Fair with a helicopter giving rides, I always like to go and watch. And honestly? The ones I've seen were pretty scary. First of all, there's a long line of people waiting to go, so the emphasis becomes hurrying to keep the line moving. By hurrying the pax in and out, the ground crews impart a sense of urgency to the pilots, who respond accordingly. And let's face it, the guys who do these rides are not the high-time, experienced pilots like me.

It's not a "tour" or even a "sightseeing" ride. It's just a quick helicopter ride over the fair. A lot of the time, the pilots provide a "rock 'n roll" type of experience, similar to the rides the people have been going on all day or night. They keep it right over the fairgrounds, banking steeply thisaway and that in a big Figure-8 before coming back in to land in about three minutes or so. They go out and come in the same way every time, regardless of the wind. For a crash to not happen, everything has to go perfectly. Every. Damn. Time. I watch, and I shake my head, and I say, "Better you than me, brother, for if that is what the 'job' requires I wouldn't last through one fuel cycle."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Helicopters are VERY easy to crash.

Hmm, 350 hours taking a little old 22 (well actually about 30 different ones) up over the city at night this past decade and a half,...phew,...how lucky I feel to still be alive! :ooh:

From JimEli's link.

That was just over fourteen months ago. Some operators have short memories.

And my post is idiotic? Alrighty then.
It's important to yield to superior knowledge, when it comes to idiotic posts there are few better experts.

Aviation is unforgiving, intolerant of errors. But easy to crash? Only to those determined to do so.
If you think criticism of an underpowered aircraft, at night, to achieve the lowest cost and maximum profit is idiotic, then so be it.
Good thing it wasn't a 505, those things are death traps, or so we've been told. :mad:

If I remember correctly, the camera thing was just a way around the 25 mile limit for a tour with no 135 certificate. This was in the U.S.

Hell, let's all just quit flying entirely, because nothing will ever be safe enough :ugh: Thankfully, that attitude does not prevail with either regulators or industry in the US. The vast preponderance of US general aviation operations, night or day, are in piston powered aircraft, much of it in single engine piston powered aircraft. Turbine powerplants are certainly more reliable, but it would seem that pistons are considered reliable enough here. Risk/reward and all that sort of thing that I've whined about incessantly. US general aviation certainly draws the line in a different place than the rest of the world (except maybe Brazil :E) and yet things seem relatively safe.

However, it is worth pointing out that the insurance industry may be changing its mind, regardless of what regulators and industry think. Given the recent, high profile tour operator incidents in Hawaii (involving both piston and turbine helicopters), and the similar incidents in NYC (involving turbine helicopters exclusively--and this goes beyond the whole shoe selfie debacle), rates are up and underwriters are down. Not only are rates up, venues (parks, shows, fairs, etc.) are demanding higher coverage amounts. The helicopter tour industry, whether it's ride concession or actual sightseeing, is going to struggle harder to make money.

That is certainly an interesting data point, and, as I conjectured previously, seems more likely IMHO than night operations. But the NTSB report will ultimately tell the tale.

These operations are most typically conducted under an FAA LOA per 91.147. No "cheating" required. The LOA seems easier to obtain than the necessary insurance sometimes, although I've never been through the LOA process myself.

Flown them and acted as ground crew, both, as I alluded to above.

Sort of true. It is easy to see where things can get stupid. I'm lucky enough to fly for an operator that has a lot of experience doing these op's. The operator expects efficiency, but not at the cost of safety. There is task specific training for both pilots and ground crew, as their should be, to improve both safety and efficiency. If the line is long flights get shorter, not less safe. This seems to work as people that have been waiting are just happy to get in the air even if it's only for three minutes. If the line gets stupid long better to turn customers away than have them get angry. You can only fly as fast as you can fly--safely--so it's not like revenue is going to be lost.

I can't speak for other op's. I did see one other op one time. They were moving very slowly, probably not making any money, and the way they were failing to avoid the flow of fixed wing traffic at this particular venue added extra risk while subtracting dollars made. Concession rides are not every op's forte.

Very true, although those definitions work for the FAA on the LOAs. It's not like the FAA doesn't know exactly how these operations work. And not everyone wants steep turns in their flight. Some folks just want a quick limousine ride. You play to your audience, safely of course. And there's only so much "rock and roll" you can do. Not only must you respect FAA aerobatic limits, the ubiquitous R44 is not going to perform low-G maneuvers either. But you know all that.

In my limited experience this is generally not true. Most venues do not want op's overhead for both safety and noise perspectives. The flights are short, certainly, but one does try to make them as interesting as they can be while a) being safe, b) not wearing out our welcome with the neighborhood and c) de-conflicting multiple ships if it's a 2 or, rarely, 3 ship event.

Sadly, this is often a limitation of the confined space available. And some of the confined spaces are very confined. One must make smart decisions. If the weather is not commensurate with the LZ, op's need to cease. I've yet to see this be required, but it will eventually.

One aspect that you did not touch on is weight and balance. I touched on it in my post above. We've got a lot of super-sized folks in the US, and they all want to ride in helicopters for 5 minutes after horking down more than their fair share of fair food and drink. If there's one area where ground crew-pilot comm's are critical it is all about W&B. As good as the ground crew is in the op's I've experienced (and many are helicopter pilots themselves), I still have waved off many loads, splitting them up or waiting for a more appropriate fuel state. And we never fly with more than half tanks because of both this and because the margin that is required in some of these confined areas. Sadly, I'm on the lightweight side, and it seems they are always looking to me to take the heavier loads :} Nevertheless, there are power checks to be respected. I've seen more than one pilot pick up the ship and put it right back down again. Some things are just not worth it.

That's true of every flight, isn't it? But I do take your point...

...which is that these are very demanding, challenging operations. Loads can be heavy, LZs tight, passengers drunk and/or stupid, and pilot fatigue a real issue. Ten loads an hour is not unusual when it's busy. The op here always has one extra pilot, and for a two ship event more normally two extra pilots. If you are tired you tell someone to take over--training and all that. And everyone wants to fly, so pilots watch out for each other, which may be the wrong reason, but it has the desired effect, which is to keep everyone rested, fed and watered. And one thing is for certain: if you fly a lot of ride concessions you definitely build up some stress tolerance. All of a sudden those 30 or 60 minute tour flights with the nice old ladies in the back seem so much easier :)

aa777888, I don't mean to be needlessly contrary here. But over the years I've witnessed multiple fairs both here in my hometown of Pensacola, Florida and up in Washington State. Once, the operator was using an Alouette of some sort, rest of the time it was R-44's. They've all been friggin' wild. Maybe not *your* operation, but the ones I've seen? Jeebus! And no, they generally don't fly right over the fairground property for the reasons you stated, but they don't stray far! They keep it tight and low - three or four minutes from skids-off to skids-on. A skosh more than half a tenth per ride = let's say 15 rides per flight hour. Keep an R-44 full at $40 per person ($120 per ride) and you're making roughly US$1,800 per flight hour. With an R-44. Not too shabby...if you don't crash the ship. No wonder R-44 operators like doing fair rides!

My boss (also a pilot) and I watch these flying circuses and say to each other, "Obviously the FAA is not in attendance." And if any FAA guys did happen to go ("Daddy, daddy! Can you take us to the fair??") to one where a helicopter was giving rides, the FAA man probably wouldn't even pull into the parking space. He'd be, like, "Uhh, gotta go, kids. Sorry. Let's do something else - isn't there a Star Wars movie out?" And he'd slam it into Drive, and pull out of that parking lot so fast that he'd be slinging gravel and putting a ton of dust in the air. He wouldn't slow down until he was almost to Arkansas.*

Now, on to Bell_ringer: Good grief man, even after all these years your reading comprehension has not improved one bit. I never said your post was idiotic, only that it came perilously close. You must not be a pilot, and you must not live in the USA. Here, we are not afraid of flying at night in single-engine pistons. If you were a pilot, you'd know that a maxed-out 206B is just as dodgy as an R-44. Your contention that all commercial ops at night should be in turbines is just...well...silly. (There are a couple of other words I could use.)

Your belief that helicopters are not "easy to crash" is contradicted by the statistics. You don't have to be "determined to do so" to crash a helicopter; you don't even have to be trying very hard! It is amazing how things can go from "Ops Normal" to "CRASHING!!!" in an instant. You will likely find that out some day and then you won't be so arrogant.

Again, we do not know what happened to the Enstrom pilot who crashed at the fair in Pennsylvania. But I'll bet you dollars to dognuts that everything was fine...fine...fine...right up to the point where he was crashing. It happens that fast.


* Some younger viewers may not get the reference to the old Charlie Daniels' song, "Uneasy Rider." Some of you older ones might not get it either.

If they were really doing 15 loads per hour, that is pretty excessive. Ten is a comfortable number that can be maintained for a reasonable length of time without getting frantic or fatigued. The most I've personally seen is 13, only once, but that was with a 10,000 hour pilot at the controls who had done this a LOT and some equally experienced loaders. The load factor for an R44 is, as you might expect, right around 2.5, because sometimes you have all the seats filled and sometimes just two. But even with a load factor of 2.5 and 10 loads an hour, it is pretty lucrative, probably about double the profit of plain old by-the-hour sightseeing or photo flights, and a hell of a lot more than training. Plus it is not unusual to operate at capacity for most of the day, thereby making the equivalent of a week's charters and lessons in one weekend.

There is a lot of thought and attention to detail that must go into a profitable and, more importantly, safe operation. From onsite fuel (one cannot be wasting time going for fuel and coming back) to making sure headsets and seat belts are squared away in unsold seats (so they don't get to places where they shouldn't be), it all matters and it's all important.

This is what a lot of pilots don't understand about how profitable tours can be. It's not about clock-hours - it's about *flight hours* (skids-up to skids-down). The only thing that matters is how much time the helicopter is spending in the air, right? Because *that* is what your operating costs are based on. It literally does not matter how many rides you can accomplish in a human clock-hour.

Let's say you do ten rides and it takes an hour of *your* time...and say each one takes three minutes (half a tenth of an hour, or .05) skids-up to skids-down in a perfect world. Okay, so those ten rides would actually only add up to 30 minutes (10 X 3 minutes). But for that little half-hour of component flight time, you just made $1,200, assuming you were charging $20 per head and you had a full ship each time. That, my friends, is $2,400 per flight hour for that helicopter.

Obviously there is going to be some downtime during refueling and pilot-swaps, etc. Maybe there's a lull in the demand. Whatever. But on a busy day, you might "work" 10 hours but put, what, 7 hours on the ship? If you keep it full, seven hours at $2,400 is $16,800. Not bad for a day's work! Of course, the pilots see very little of that. This is why some operators (I know of one in particular) beat pilots over the head to keep the rides to a certain duration. Even a minute or so added to every ride can seriously mess with your profits.

Now of course, the world isn't perfect. Not every weekend will be flyable, weather-wise the whole time. The ship won't be full every time. Some rides you'll only have two people. Maybe there'll be a big lull during lunch or when a band is playing or something and you're not flying. Maybe the pilot is sloppy and makes every ride four minutes instead of three. Maybe you'll only be able to gross, oh, $1,500 per hour and only put seven hours on the ship. Still, that's a cool $10,500 for the day. How many days is this fair going on? Friday, Saturday and Sunday? $30,000 for a weekend? "I'm going to Hawaii, boys! Get the ship to the next fair and I'll see you on Friday!"

Sightseeing/tours can make a LOT of money.

If you don't crash the ship ;-)

,...and yet there are operators out there paying pilots $15, $12, even $10 bucks an hour to fly these three minute money makers:{

Ah well, just as patronising and condescending as usual.
It may come as a surprise but there is a world outside of the US (no I don't, nor have ever operated there).
The rest of the world takes a more serious look at night ops and the requirements, some prohibit it alltogether.
In the US you are also not afraid of letting tethered people drown in the back of helicopters, or to have HEMS pilots repeatedly come to grief in those easy to crash helicopters. We all have so much to learn from you.

You're right, there's no difference between 3 pax in a dodgy jetbanger and 3 in a 44, pistons are more reliable than a turbine and NASA never put a man on the moon.
Sir, I shall climb out of this intellectual paddling pool and go back to drawing crayon pics of helicopters as I am obviously hopelessly out of my depth. :E

For those who want to take commercial-paying pax on night joyrides around a crowded fairground:
(Assuming you have checked the site on foot first, then done a few circuits in and out of this place in daylight and assessed the risks and the best approach and departure routes)
How high would you expect to climb for this circuit, given that the ride is only supposed to go for 3 minutes, and you need to fly a full circle around the site;
You would be lucky to get to 500', and a loaded R44 is lucky to climb at 500'/min, you will barely reach 500' before having to descend again in a turn.
Loaded 44, straining on the power, high collective setting, pilot talking to the pax and not paying much attention, after all it is the 47th flight today, climbing through maybe 300', and it gives a cough. *coff*
What are your options? Very limited. It is night. Black as the inside of a cow.
Do you go for a lit area? Oops, the fairground is full of tents and people. The carpark is full of cars and people.That lit highway is jammed with cars coming to, and leaving from, the fair. There is a dark patch over there, it might be a flat bit that doesn't have people. Turn towards, try to regain some RRPM and airspeed, here comes flare height...
Rats. It's a hole in the ground for a construction site.

So, a twin turbine makes some sense in our country. A single piston makes no sense at all. A single turbine is a bit better, but still not legal for joyrides. Not here. And you are right, I have never flown in your country except as a pax (Hang on, I flew a Schweizer 330 around Miami over houses at zot feet in daylight hours back in 1996. Tell the truth. But I wasn't the captain...) and I never expect to. I wouldn't even want to.

Ah yes, "I'll never fly anything but a twin!"

...'cause the number one cause of accidents at night is engine failure!

It is my observation that the fair rides assembled by tweakers are more dangerous than the helicopter rides.

A work load like that in a Robbie doesn't leave much time to check for blade cracks or de-bonding.

Hmm,...better go with the twin then!

On a more rational note, and ignoring the Robinson jibes: with regard to @Ascend-Charlie's point about where are you going to go when you get hit with an auto at low altitude, the only answer anyone can give is "The best of the bad options". Because these operations tend to be in either built up areas (in which case it will not be as dark as a cow's insides), or they tend to be out in the countryside, which means the trees (at least around here it does). Because it's very unlikely you are going to have any conveniently empty farm fields or the like.

Certainly one should be making intelligent choices about where night rides are going to be offered. An area that is very dark is not a good area for a lot of obvious reasons, not just emergencies. The only night ride concession I'm aware of around these parts involves an LZ in a ball field in the middle of a small city and generally runs up and down the river that goes through the city. The area is well lighted. They use an R44 with pop-out floats. It's actually as good as it gets, day or night, i.e. an auto will likely end up on the floats in the river (a lazy river, not a raging torrent) and not balled up on some residential street.

Finally, most most turbines are not economically viable choices for the vast majority of these operations. A twin would be doubly bad (ha, a pun!) At per seat rates of between $30 and $40 USD, as has already been pointed out you need to be in the air 80% of the time. To unload/load say 6 folks safely from a turbine ship takes too long and requires too large a ground staff lest you lose physical control of one of your passengers on the ground.

Officials now considering a ban on helicopter flights at fair.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/1...sh-report.html

"Officials" and "ban" make it sound like government regulatory action. If you don't feel like reading the article, it's just the fair organizers saying that they probably won't ever have helicopter rides at their fair again. The same is true of many other fairs and events. Not everyone likes the idea.

There are a lot of non-aviation side effects in the fairground industry, too. For example, there is a yearly fair that had some fatalities from a tent collapse not too long ago. Their insurance requirements are now so high it's a wonder they have a fair at all. There is another fair that had a deadly fire many years back. They still won't accept a helicopter concession, or any other concession they feel might be a "fire hazard".

My intent is not to be confrontational, but to offer an opinion and a perspective of one who has some experience with these operations, to propose that they do not represent guaranteed certain death, and that such operations can be and, I hope in all cases, are executed in a safe and responsible manner. Of course we know that is not true in all cases, the same as it is not always 100% true in any type of operations you care to name: long line, HEMS, utility, etc.

No. I write only as a pilot involved in such operations. Which, as you might imagine, does not involve much from a pecuniary standpoint.

Most certainly, and I already offered a couple of examples where this was in fact the case, if not for the op's I've been associated with, then for others.

Not specifically. I only point out that both the text of your post and the headline of the article might suggest that to people who don't give the article a careful read.