Which suggests it wasn't quite as "inky black" as some have suggested. Yes, there is a heli-pad on top of the main islet (easily seen on Google Maps) but what is also noticeable are the cable-car wires stretching from the small harbour up to just under the heli-pad (at 1:22 in video). If the ceiling was low, could the SAR aircraft have landed at the harbour instead of the heli-pad, and struck the wires possibly with the tail rotor after take-off? "Skewed, unsteady flight"? If the TRGB then broke off, the sequence of events leading to the condition of the wreckage is not hard to visualise.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/...!4d131.8668421

The tail was found "114 meters from the fuselage" according to news reports.
https://news.imaeil.com/inc/photos/2...94287036_l.jpg

There wasn't any power to that rotor when it hit the sea so it departed in the air. A clean break at an assembly point?

From the almost damaged free picture of that tail boom it couldn't have been chopped off by the main rotor.....what would cause it to separate in flight so cleanly?

Outwest it does not seem to have been chopped off.
Like Fareast says, looks like a clean separation at the transport joint.

Poor Airbus.

Just when they convince themselves that the main rotor system won’t fall off anymore, a tail boom departs the scene.
Standing by for the Airbus press release that they have found the tail boom attachment bolts in a tool box*



* Referring of course to their initial claim they had the “parts” that should have attached the MRGB in the Norwegian 225.

there are quite a few other video examples where the tailbooms depart the aircraft without being struck by the MRB's.
In those, its clearly an overloaded scenario dependent on the torque applied. The weakest point loses the fight.
What caused that in this case will be determined I am sure.

Also to be considered - the point, where you find parts on the seabed - doesn´t automatically mean, that they dropped in the water vertical above that point.
Depending on current, shape, weight, trapped air, parts can travel quite a distance before hitting the ground.

yeah, i know, thats what i was saying. I agreed with you saying theres many more examples of that out there.

I think you missed my point, which was that exactly. It was NOT chopped off.

Thats true, but you still can't dismiss the lack of damage to both the boom itself and the TR blades, suggesting it departed with plenty of time for the blades to slow down before impact with the water....

Yes sorry about that. Must read more carefully.

One of these threads
 

Yet again people died in an EC225 and still we have armchair experts jumping to conclusions and most likely being proved wrong, again. I have heard the ‘it’s ok to speculate’ argument time and time again. When people are dead and their bodies are missing it just is not ok to speculate that it was likely to be two of the dead’s fault until there is at least some evidence to back that up. Two of you armchair warriors already have form if anybody cares to look at the Norwegian 225 thread. Maybe I should speculate and imply that you are receiving payment from Airbus to influence opinion on this public forum? I don’t believe that, but what has been implied here is worse. You denigrate the professions involved here with your pathetic amateur sleuth work!

Wooo buddy, I'm not jumping to any conclusions at all, just stating the obvious that the tail boom and TR was basically damage free according to the picture. I, as you and everyone else have no idea on how or why it departed the a/c, but it sure looks like it did.

Hompy - neat move there seizing the moral high ground and then dumping your own biases as an aside. Classy.

Not entirely happy with your intro there but maybe it's just the times we live in.

We all have an ambition for everyone to be safe in the air and it's right to want the H225 to never have another accident. However, I think that in this age of easy mass communications and easy access to news we can lose sight of the historical context. Sometimes it seems like what happened before the internet never happened. In terms of helicopter fatalities, large rotorcraft that have been in widespread service for 15 years and done hundreds of thousands of flying hours but only had a couple of dozen fatalities are an outstanding new feature of the helicopter market. So that would be the Airbus H225 and the Sikorsky S-92. Let's not forget the thousands of people who died in accidents in other large rotorcraft down the years (some models of which are still around and still having fatal accidents at an unacceptable rate). Think too about the many people who are alive today who might have been dead if Airbus had not produced the H225 and Sikorsky had not produced the S-92.

Onwards and upwards.

No moral high ground here but interesting you think I dumped any bias because I really couldn’t give a t8##! I just don’t like pilots/engineers/crewman or families of dead people suffering because some idiot has to massage their ego instead of getting a decent hobby, is all.

Don't fret things Hompy, SM has deep well-aged biases in favour of AS/ECF/Airbus products. He would much rather you find fault with pilots, as that fits nicely with his pre-conceived ideas of risk :ugh:

Well, well, Shelly is back. We've missed the three years of no comedy you regularly provided in your various analysis of safety issues. Take no notice of the prat Hompy.

Any news about preliminary report?

Check the title. This is a rumour forum. It sounds to me like it’s not a suitable forum for you to read. Never mind, there are plenty of others.

Anyone know if a preliminary report has been issued yet? Any official statements? It's been very quiet since the accident and no information to find on the web. Surely there must be causes the South Korean Accident Investigation Board has ruled out that should be shared with the public.

The silence is remarkable - not a preliminary report after close to 4 months must indicate they have found nothing so far - and that even with recovered CVR and FDR.

The silence indeed is remarkable. If we consider a pilots error the clean cut off of the tailboom does not fit into this picture. The fact that Airbus seems totally relaxed shows that most probably there is no problem caused by the design of the h/c, nor by material fatigue. The (only) explanation remaining which makes sense is a connection between the accident and the maintenance which was done some weeks before the crash. Where a missing good torque of the bolts of the airframe - tailboom junction could perfectly explain the clean cut of the tailboom, too. Taking all this together with a far eastern mentality where an individual never does something wrong you'll maybe find the reason for the silence.

# Assuming Airbus isn’t a morally bankrupt organization.
* History would suggest: Airbus would be very vocal about this explanation. They were in a previous EC225 fatal crash. Even the fact that it wasn’t a maintenance issue didn’t stop them.

South East Asia region looks like the last market for non military brand new H225 h/c. Being Airbus, would you bite the last civil hand which feeds you?

Korea National 119 Rescue is receiving a factory new S-92 for firefighting and search & rescue missions. Is this a sign of distrust in the H225 following the accident in 2019? Still haven't seen an accident report. Anyone else?

A while ago I was in contact with someone from www.aviation-safety.net , they have the H225 HL9619 as occurance 230316 in their data base. He said that it is not unusual that an accident investigation takes some two years in South Corea. Corean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB, www.araib.molit.go.kr ) is in charge. As the h/c recently had maintenance, the tailboom was separated razor sharp from frame 9900 and the TR was not turning anymore when it hit the sea. I have my own theory about what happened.