Can Gordy or someone else familiar with the tour route in question discuss why synthetic vision would not provide an adequate escape tool for this situation? ( I realise we've already discussed IFR proficiency, but I don't think that we have specifically discussed synthetic vision products like Foreflight or some of the Garmin products).

For instance, a buddy has a large iPad Pro mounted above the instrument panel of his R66 and that large a display can be quite compelling. There's no question in my mind that I could perform a 0/0 approach to a running landing with that system ( to a runway or piece of pavement) despite the 1/4 or 1/2 second update delay.

What are the particular characteristics of this tour route that would prevent such systems from providing a reliable escape from IIMC? For instance, is the terrain map not accurate to the rugged terrain in the valley?

I realise I'm often guilty of looking for technical solutions to problems that may be more human factors, but my experience with such systems makes me wonder whether such a system could have prevented this accident?

Paul - what sensors are providing this synthetic vision? Radar, IR, digital database, Google maps?

Basically, you are flying in canyons, and especially when the weather turns nasty you do not want to take your eyes off where you are going. Trying to go from VFR to instruments is not easy and takes a finite time.

I am not a pilot and this is my first post, because I was intrigued about the unfortunate Kauai accident since I took the helicopter tour there about 20 years ago. It was very thrilling and I was not all that concerned until the pilot said we were going to fly over an area that had one of the greatest (if not the greatest, I cannot recall) rainfall accumulations on the earth! It was sunny when we departed but sure enough, halfway through the trip it started raining so hard I could not see through the plexiglass (I guess the pilot could, or his instruments were guiding him because I am typing this). As I said, not being a pilot, all I could think of was all that rain being sucked into the engine and wondering how the engineers designed things to keep the craft in the air. Suddenly, the sun shone again and the rest of the trip was uneventful. But I will never forget the volume of sudden rain that day and the skill of the pilot.

Turbulence can be amplified in a canyon as well, particularly here where the cliffs are in the 3000 foot class. It is not obvious that going to instruments would help much under those conditions.

Sure, its kinda cool, but it does get pretty tight in places.

Hoping that video was not filmed on a regular tour as some of those scenes were filmed closer than the prescribed minimums for tours.

Well here's one with one of those awesome shoe selfies,...plus a selfie stick outside the door pic,...oooh wow, isn't this guy so cool!

Ahh the blessings that affordable Robinson helicopter flights provide.
All those poor knobheads would otherwise be stuck on the ground with their selfie sticks :}

Crab, a combination of GPS and digital terrain maps, with attitude being provided by any AHRS you have... In our B206L3 it's coming from the Garmin 650 GPS's AHRS, when I'm flying some random aircraft it's coming from the AHRS in my portable Stratus ADSB receiver.

Looking at the two videos posted, I doubt the terrain map is detailed enough to help in those narrow valleys. That's pretty crazy!

Next time I fly with my buddy I'll try to get a picture of the setup in his R66.

Re: Gordy's statement about time to switch to IFR, it's not really the same thing, because you're not having to interpret instruments... It's just another picture of what you are seeing out the front window. Same thing you see with a Garmin G1000...

Thank you, Robbie, for those two postings.
They illustrate the issue very clearly. Just consider a happy helo holiday going up the canyon when a sudden front comes through, with gusts, turbulence and thick fog.
Not a good place to be. RIP the pilot and his charges, they got caught through no fault of their own.

If we go synthetic, this might be a better suggestion:
Virtual flying over Paris:
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ddfbc180a.jpeg

“A person who was near a remote Hawaii site where a tour helicopter crashed and killed seven people last month told investigators that visibility was only about 20 feet (6 meters) at the time because of fog and rain, according to a preliminary accident report released Wednesday.

The unidentified person was on a hiking trail Dec. 26 in Koke’e State Park on Kauai island and described hearing a hovering helicopter followed by a high-pitched whine, the National Transportation Safety Board report said.

The person was about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away from the remote mountain ridge where the helicopter went down. The witness tried to look for the helicopter but could not because of the weather conditions and fading daylight, the report said.“

From:
https://apnews.com/549f8f391f044e84fd918228ab98c081

NTSB Preliminary Report: https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/Re...relim&IType=MA

On December 26, 2019, about 1657 Hawaii standard time, an Airbus AS350 B2 helicopter, N985SA, was destroyed by impact forces and a postcrash fire when it collided with terrain about 24 miles northwest of Lihue, Hawaii. The commercial pilot and six passengers were fatally injured. The helicopter was registered to SAF LTD and operated by Safari Aviation Inc., doing business as Safari Helicopters, as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 135 on-demand commercial air tour flight. Company flight following procedures were in effect for the visual flight rules flight, which departed Lihue Airport (PHLI), Lihue, Hawaii at 1631.
The accident flight was the pilot's eighth and last scheduled 50-minute aerial tour flight of the day. About 1632, the pilot radioed Safari Helicopters' headquarters reporting a departure time of 1631. Shortly thereafter, another company pilot heard the accident pilot report his position at "Tree Tunnel," an air tour reporting point, on the common traffic advisory frequency.

About 1645, an air tour pilot from a different company reported that he heard the accident pilot report "Upper Mic," which was a compulsory air tour reporting point that indicated the accident helicopter was exiting the Waimea Canyon and beginning a transition over to the Na Pali coastline via Koke'e State Park.

About 1731, ten minutes after the accident helicopter was due to arrive back at PHLI, the flight follower for Safari Helicopters notified the company's director of operations that the helicopter was overdue, and flight-locating procedures began. An extensive search was initiated, and search operations were conducted by personnel from Safari Helicopters, the US Coast Guard, the Kauai Fire Department, the Kauai Police Department, the Civil Air Patrol, and the Hawaii Air National Guard.

On December 27, about 0932, the accident site was located within the Koke'e State Park. The helicopter impacted tropical mountainous terrain on a north facing slope at an elevation of about 3,003 ft mean sea level (msl) and came to rest at an elevation of about 2,900 ft msl. All of the helicopter's major components were located within the debris field, and the wreckage was largely consumed by a postcrash fire.

A witness located about 1.5 to 1.75 miles up the Nualolo Trail within the Koke'e State Park near the time of the accident reported weather conditions of about 20 ft visibility in rain and fog. He heard what he described as a hovering helicopter followed by a high-pitched whine. Knowing something was wrong, he attempted to locate the helicopter but was unable due to the adverse weather conditions and fading daylight.

The figure below shows a typical tour route via Tree Tunnel to Upper Mic, as described by Safari Helicopters. The accident site is noted in the upper left portion of the figure. As the accident helicopter did not have flight tracking equipment onboard, the exact flight path is unavailable.

The closest official weather observation station to the accident site was Barking Sands Pacific Missile Range Facility (PABK), Kauai, Hawaii, located about 9 miles southwest of the accident site. The 1656 observation reported wind from 310° at 12 knots, gusting to 15 knots; 10 statute miles visibility; few clouds at 1,200 ft, broken clouds at 3,400 ft and 4,700 ft, overcast clouds at 6,000 ft; temperature 70°F; dew point 57°F; and an altimeter setting of 29.90 inches of mercury.

A PABK special weather observation at 1718 reported wind from 350° at 10 knots; 2 1⁄2 statute miles visibility in rain and mist, overcast clouds at 3,000 ft; temperature 73°F; dew point 72°F; and an altimeter setting of 29.90 inches of mercury.

What is the accuracy and % error of synthetic vision? From what I understand it is between 100 to 150ft vertically/horizontally.
It wasn't designed for winding through valleys, it was to provide a better reference from a reasonable altitude.
I always suspected that the Bell 505 crashes that occured at night/poor visibility was a result of pilots starting to rely on SV when otherwise they wouldn't fly, it's just a hunch.
Some also don't appreciate that wires, towers and buildings don't feature.

Honestly, I think it would have helped. The area the crash occurred in wasn't one in which you would normally be in a valley or canyon. The rising terrain would typically be behind you at that point, not ahead of you and mostly not alongside either. Looking at the pictures of the crash site that have been released it appears the aircraft hit a ridge whilst heading towards the south west, i.e. back towards the Canyon. It could have been disorientation but I suspect the pilot turned back and found the route back to the Canyon had closed.

As to why it's not fitted, probably the most common argument against is it encourages pilots to take more risks knowing they have something to fall back on. I won't say it's an argument without merit, but to me the issue is that when a pilot does make a mistake (and that happens) they are often almost entirely relying on luck until they break out again. The point was made earlier about having a heading bug set on a safe heading, but not all tour aircraft have HSIs or even attitude indicators. I wouldn't want to rely on synthetic vision, especially in a valley, but if I've screwed up enough that it's synthetic vision, trying to fly a compass heading or just keeping my fingers crossed, I'm inclined to say I'd go with synthetic vision (although I've never used it).

In the Google earth map it looks like they have the "Upper Mic" in the wrong place. It should be one ridge to the West right on the dot there.

I agree with B87----my best guess would be he was headed to the back of Nualolo, was prolly hugging the ground with a cloud bank on his right, slowly getting worse and then realized it was not going to happen and tried to get back to the canyon. Had he have been going West he would have been OK I suspect.

That sloping plateau from the back of the Canyon to the coast is very deceiving, there are few distinguishing features, and it is easy to get disorientated, especially as one rarely looks at your compass. I have to admit, that I once was doing the exact same thing, saw an opening and announced to my passengers that the Napali coast would appear out the right window in 5..4..3..2..1..... and.... never mind, we are back in the canyon again. That is how easy it is to get dis-orientated up there.

Paul - thanks, but it seems a bit of a misnomer to call it synthetic vision - you are simply relying on a computer database to display terrain which may or may not be 100% accurate - you are not even using radar to map what is actually in front of you. Not something I would trust my life with.

Crab,

I don't have an opinion on the name, just what it's being called:

Garmin and Foreflight both use the term.

As for how trustworthy, here's a PDF page discussing the Jeppesen database.

It contains a reference to the resolution of the data, which was asked in a previous posting:While I would be reluctant to trust the data to fly the aircraft in normal flight ( like, without looking out the window), if I found myself in an IIMC encounter and it said there was terrain, I would tend to believe the data ( i.e I'd turn away from the charted terrain): in my experience both the terrain and the obstacles seem to correlate well with what I see from the cockpit.

As I said previously, the resolution ( 295 feet by 52 feet ) doesn't sound like it's good enough for an encounter down in that terrain we see in the tour videos, but it's probably sufficient to guide you away from a prominent ridge. I'd be interested to hear peoples opinion on data fidelity in terrain like Kauai... I think the intent was always to guide an airplane away from major terrain features, not as a high resolution terrain map for NOE helicopter flying. Still, it's pretty impressive to have a global database with this kind of resolution available for essentially free.

Funny, I have a similar reaction to low time R44 owners wanting the autopilot that's now available. Some pilots will push on in worse weather hoping the autopilot will save them, which it probably WILL if they don't hit a wire or tower... It's hard to know for sure how aids like that will effect the total accident rates.

Similarly I could see the synthetic vision having that effect, except that in the case of Kauai it seems like people are already pushing pretty darn hard. My hat is off to the guys flying those tours every day. Additionally though, I think the tour pilots are probably very aware that if they actually punch in and have to use SV or instruments to get back to VFR, the people in the back aren't sworn to secrecy. If that's happening too often I imagine it would be visible to FAA etc.

I'm convinced my balls must be shrinking in size, because in years past I would push pretty hard on VFR weather, but in recent years I've noticed myself canceling flights more. A while back I mentioned to a fellow pilot that I have simply had enough of being scared in the air.