No, you just don't fly over them in a single - it's not rocket science.

Please allow me to politely and respectfully point out that there are others who are just as reliably predictable in their posting when they feel the subject of ride concessions comes up, perhaps more so since they posted before I did.

At the admitted risk of some thread drift (not that there hasn't been quite a bit already), it would be an interesting study to see which type of operation had the higher fatality rate per pax and per hour: the "slow thrill ride" (more conventional tour) industry, or the "quick thrill ride" industry. I can't get the NTSB database to produce easy results, i.e. one would have to wade through every report individually to determine the context of the flight.

I'd rather have the freedom to make that choice for myself. As for the unsuspecting public, well, feel free to post a sign at each tour operation that reads, "If you did this flight in a twin, you'd have a "×%" better chance of surviving in the event of an engine failure".

I would though love to see you flying up to the city at night in a 22 with goggles on,...that would be precious! :ok:

It all depends on your appetite for risk and how much you believe it won't happen to you.

For the 'quick thrill' industry, it seems a high appetite for risk and a great belief it won't happen to you = short flights at low level over less than ideal landing areas. Clearly the level of pilot skill is so much higher than in other commercial operations that the risk is worth exposing the pilot and pax to in order to make a few bucks.

If that's what floats your boat and lets you think it is somehow professional and 'risk-mitigated' then carry on but don't expect sympathy if it ends in tears.

I love the use of statistics to defend taking risks with other people's lives. Just because it hasn't happened or happens infrequently doesn't mean it can't or won't happen, it just means you have been lucky so far.

The same can be said for me choosing to live in California, since at any moment we could have another big earthquake that could level the cities and collapse the bridges..

If you need to see me as a wild risk taker for flying a single at night and/or needlessly risking the lives of the trusting but gullible public, so be it,...I'm a cowboy anyway.

Thing is though, I do think it will happen to me, which is why I'm always looking for possible forced landing areas, but over time I started to feel that its far less probable than many other issues I fear at night, like bird strike, getting hit by another aircraft, the fog suddenly closing me in, hitting that last minute unseen obstacle on approach, LTE, and SWP,...and no second engine will help my odds there.

,...but then I guess every pilot who hasn't crashed could just be considerd lucky, day or night.

Well then surely that applies to any operation, eh?

Robbiee - perhaps you are just lucky enough to be able to have helicopter flying as a hobby, rather than those of us who have to earn our living assessing,taking and mitigating those risks.

aa777888 - yes but professional mitigation of those risks helps reduce the odds rather markedly.

Yeah, you're probably right. Chances are the engines says to itself, "This guys just flying for fun, so I won't quit on him,...better to wait for the guy whose getting paid to crash me".

,...probably why birds never hit me either. :hmm:

Well, you still believe in LTE, so you perhaps also think that the Magic Helicopter Fairy is watching over you at night.

Dream on.

Can't post it, but I have a video of a police Schweizer 333 that suffered engine failure and had to autorotate at night in a built-up urban area. Crew survived but hit a wire just shy of making a car park. They did a great job, but even then...

Grown ups are having a discussion, so next time ask daddy before you use his computer,...okay Sport.

Now go to be, its getting late.

Going by the spelling it's way past your bedtime. ;)Hardly.


This is night.

What an interesting thread! I read through the entire thing, but I somehow missed the actual statistics regarding helicopter engine failure rates at night vs. helicopter engine failure rates during daytime. Failing that, what is the overall helicopter engine failure rate? Of course there will be a significant difference between piston and turbine engines. Oh by the way, how does night VFR/ IFR differ significantly from daytime IFR with respect to engine failure? Should single engine helicopters be grounded during IMC?

Cheers,
Grog

So, exactly what's the point you're trying to make here,...just how macho you are for flying in a black hole, or that the FAA should change its definition of night?

No one in this thread (other than myself) seems all that interested in the stats and/or your chances of having an engine failure at night vs. day. All they seem to care about is, "its harder to see at night, therefore we only want to fly twins".

Right, because that's the reason people are against the idea of single-engine helicopters flying at night. Nobody is suggesting that the chances of engine failure are higher - why would they be? It's because if there is an engine failure, the ability to pick out a suitable landing site and carry out an autorotation into it is greatly diminished at night.
Pretending to assume people must be suggesting the chances of engine failure are greater at night is a straw-man argument.

Yes, absolutely. They are here in the UK.

Its an interesting phenomenon that those most cavalier about risk understand it the least.
that the difference between the probability of engine failure and the the probability of surviving one when you can’t see where you are landing isn’t grasped rather demonstrates the point.

Everyone is free to take the risks with which they are comfortable, its when you expect your pax and the people living beneath you to be happy with your choices, or desire to make money, that authorities can and should intervene.
regulations are rarely made because of the actions of responsible people exercising common sense.

I’m going to leave it there and not encourage the trolling that has become a theme on this thread.

Singles can fly in IMC if they are properly equipped and the pilot is trained and licenced. (Maybe not in the UK?) Same at night. As long as you flick the switch to let the engine run on black air instead of white air.

The problem comes when paying passengers want to be inside. The pilot by himself knows and accepts the risks he is taking. The pax expect a perfectly safe flight with a soft landing at the desired spot, but that is not predictable at night or in IMC. Hence the second engine to keep you up and allow you to choose your crash site more carefully.

Here it is:

Bellringer - good post, sums up the problems with those amateurs who want to justify their actions regardless of professional advice.:ok:

Stats help prevent needless over-regulation. Do the stats show that passengers always survive daytime engine failurs in tour helicopters, but always die in nighttime ones? I took a ride in Vegas as a tourist in a Jet Ranger many years ago, what were my odds of dying that night,...1/10. 1/50,...1/1,000? Am I just lucky to be alive after that ride, because they drop out of the skies regularly?

Stats might even prove that having a twin doesn't make it any safer at night. Twins still crash in IIMC?

I will fly any day VFR Night in a single. Over cultural lights that is. Not in order to better see the autorotation landing zone, but in order to avoid any risk of spatial disorientation.

Most accidents at night - even in countries where singles may fly at night - are not at all caused by engine failure. But by fuel starvation, mismanagement of aircraft systems that in a twin are inherently more complex. By CFIT, or by a false sense of security that lures pilots without IFR proficiency into thinking they can wing it (do I need to give examples? England, LA, Bahamas, just check the parallel thread...).

I further can't help the feeling that operators often use very old twins (in order to meet the regulatory requirements where twins are required) for obvious capital cost reasons. Old twins that - even if not necessarily less reliable - have very complicated AP and various other stabilisation systems that all depend on, or interfere with each other, and that are just too complicated for the average charter pilot to ever become proficient with.

So no, I guess the argument that flying singles at night within the regulations exposes people on the ground the *undue* risk is baseless.

Merely that there is a difference between night and night. Similarly you have dark night conditions during the day, try an unlit airport at the base of a mountain that's in the lee of a setting sun. In the first video you could take a person who has just done their first solo and they could fly around all night, providing the lights stayed on, in the second you better be on top of your IMC skills. A reading of page 36 of the following report is germain, as the report says,https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/24411/...304282_001.pdf

@crab and @Bell_ringer: let's face it, as far as the both of you are concerned, the only safe way to fly tours, short form or long form, would be in a twin. Because short tours typically occur at low altitudes over congested areas, and long tours (e.g. Grand Canyon, Hawaii, etc.) often occur over forbidding terrain. However a twin would make the business case infeasible (nobody would pay the required price), and in many cases the use of even a single engine turbine ship the same. This makes that part of the industry a substantial province of the venerable R44, which you both seem to feel is hopelessly inadequate to the task from a passenger risk perspective given the typical flight profiles.

And yet, from a strictly US perspective, both the passengers and operators would appear to disagree with you. Leaving aside the recent pandemonium--er--pandemic nonsense, the industry does a booming business, and the short form, piston-powered subset would seem, admittedly anecdotally based on media reporting, to do so more safely than the single turbine, long-form part of the industry.

As someone who has done quite a bit of the short-form, and a limited amount of the long-form, my impression is that the average US short-form customer desperately wants to risk their lives, they want the "thrill ride", or at least the impression of one. They have no illusions. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to do aerobatics. Alas, my standard answer is "This is not the Red Bull helicopter." Throwing in a few mildly steep turns is enough to have them asking for a few Kleenex to clean themselves up with, and I don't mean vomit. Thus maintaining the illusion and not the reality of danger which, of course, is vitally important. Meanwhile the long-form US passenger prefers a limousine ride, even those who want to shoot "shoe selfies" (none of my passengers, thank goodness).

At any rate, in the US it's not the FAA that controls this business sector, it's the insurance industry. I'm proud to say that the operation I'm associated with still enjoys low enough rates, even with the recent departure of several US underwriters and substantial rate increase across the board (thanks so much, certain HI and NY op's), to make the venture profitable. This is even in the face of underwriter representatives showing up at one of our events to monitor operations, something which we welcomed wholeheartedly.

I hope you find the preceding discussion professional enough, because I and those I'm associated with certainly approach the business with a very professional attitude toward both business and safety.

You are trying to justify the existence of an industry that doesn't need to exist. The great unwashed don't need their 'thrill' rides and the people living underneath the routes certainly don't need the noise and worry about accidents.

The Grand Canyon certainly doesn't need the noise and air pollution - something like 400 flights a day in what is supposed to be a beautiful and tranquil place - just to service a bunch of lazy people who can't be arsed to go and walk down into the canyon to admire its majesty. The next step is the awful Escalade that planners keep pushing for.

When making money can only be achieved by taking and putting other people at increased risk with no tangible upside other than a thrill, maybe that money making just shouldn't happen.

You say increased risk, Crab, but based on the numbers, there really isn't increased risk in single or piston operations in the tours context. We know that of all the accidents, somewhere between very few and none are caused by engine failure and many are caused by factors unconnected to number of engines such as pilot error, fuel, W&B, weather, failure of dynamic components etc.

KJ - that doesn't mean the risk is reduced - history is not a predictor of future events.

For those wanting a thrill, I think bungee jumping elastic ropes are probably twice as thick as they need to be.....

This is a great post, crab. Seriously, because now I finally have an appreciation for where you are coming from.

Tell you what: when you are the absolute ruler you can outlaw things you think other people don't need. In the meantime, capitalism reigns, freedom reigns, people will make up their own minds, and if there is a market for what you think is something too risky, or too annoying, or too whatever, it really doesn't matter, does it, other than that it makes you unhappy. The market will seek it's own level. If insurance rates go up, or everyone is arrested for murder, or whatever, then the little guys running the little shows will dry up and you'll be happy. Or they won't and it will be business as usual.

And how is this any different than driving in cars? Imagine this dystopian vision: did you really need to go to the store? If you had only ordered off of Amazon you might not have hit and killed that innocent person, not to mention all the fuel you wasted.

People do a million things every day that put other people at risk and that they don't need to do. That includes pretty much all of general aviation. It's called freedom. It can be ugly at times, but the pluses outweigh the minuses by a long, long ways for dare say most of us.

The people underneath those "thrill" rides at night in Vegas are mostly inside a casino where they cannot hear anything over the bells and whistles of the poker machines, the rest are half drunk walking to their next party and assuredly couldn't care about the noise overhead,...if they can even hear the choppers over the traffic.

,....but then all of Vegas need not exist, or Disneyworld, or movie theaters, or anything we do in between slaving away for that all mightly dollar!

As for the Grand Canyon, I don't think they do tours at night, so no little animals are losing any sleep.

Just out of curiosity, does going on a ride at night in a twin, suddenly inspire "the great unwashed" to wash themselves? :rolleyes:

perhaps for the terminally selfish with no respect for their fellow humans - look at me, I have lots of cash and can do what the f*** I like and you can't stop me.........

If you want to know what I really think, then imagine how someone who went through a demanding selection system and years of unrelenting training with the constant threat of failing, in order to have the honour of serving their country and use those hard-won skills to save lives (some to take them) but to do good, valuable and necessary things with a helicopter (I include Police, EMS and firefighters in that category)- imagine how they might view someone with deep pockets who bought themselves a licence going through a training system that was never going to fail them because they could keep paying, who wants to lecture them about freedom...............and have the perks of flying in a helicopter without ever earning them.

Crab, you need to appreciate you are appealing to an American perspective, one where everything is your right, something no one should meddle with, where every opportunity should be milked for every penny and if there are a few casualties along the way, well, that is the price of doing business.
besides, its only seldom that tourists end up drowned in a river so regulating that would be a gross overstepping of authority.

Your view of civilian pilots is so delusional I don't know where to begin. I could only afford to become a pilot by burying myself in debt (like so many who weren't born with a perfect military quality body) that will take me two or three lifetimes to pay off. Plus my pockets are so deep from driving a semi for a living that I haven't enjoyed the only sliver of unnecessary freedom I had for over a year, because I can't afford the ridiculously high cost of renter's insurance!

​​​​​​​,...and I earned my license you sanctimonious jackass!

No, you bought your licence. How many people you went through training with failed and were sent home to think again?

By the way, I don't tar all civilian pilots with the same brush, just those that want to lecture me on freedom.

You can't just buy a license, you still have to perform to standards, and prove you posses the required level of knowledge. Plus you also have to work for that money to pay for (not the license) but the training required to pass the tests to get that license,...and I actually did fail my commercial checkride, and had to get more training in order to live up to the required standards.

,...as opposed to being the "chosen one" who then gets his training for free plus a job waiting for him when its over.

,...and I don't tar all military pilots with the same brush, just the one's who lecture me on how they're more deserving of being a pilot.

I think the philosophical differences here are terminally irreconcilable. For example, my idea of the greatest respect for fellow humans is to leave them alone and not tell them what they can and can't do. I suspect you find this horrifyingly degenerate as opposed being the highest form of respect. Not trying to change your mind, and you won't change mine.

If I had lots of cash I'd be owning and flying a one or two or five million dollar machine. I worked super hard to get what I have. I work super hard to keep what I have.

Robbiee - the standard required for a CPL is nothing like the pinnacle you seem to imagine it to be. Have a look on the 139 thread about the standards maintained by many commercial pilots from a TRE who has seen a lot.

You simply won't understand the level that most military pilots are required to operate to nor the fact that being selected 'chosen' for training is only the first step on a very competitive, difficult and demanding path. Don't forget, I have a commercial licence too...

I didn't have to do just one check ride to get my wings, nor my operational captaincy nor my instructor qualification, it is a never ending round of check and test rides in the military.

aa777888 - you might find it surprising but I am generally a live and let live sort of person but, in my chosen profession of aviation, I expect high standards of those sharing the sky with me - I don't see much in the way of high professional standards in the pleasure flight industry, just a sausage machine for generating cash as quickly as possible with a thin veneer of concern about passenger safety.

There's a reason we don't have single engine airliners.....