2 Blackhawks down in Utah, no injuries
 

Apparently a training exercise incident, see

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/22/u...tah/index.html

Here it is:

Look at this video---the one in front is spinning right at the beginning of the video:

And yet one more view: I'll let y'all discuss.....:cool:

A protracted hover before landing in severe blowing snow is dangerous enough. Landing two in close formation in white out conditions really isn’t a good idea.

Maybe they can find room in their budget for a little training from a civilian heli-ski operator. Video had "bad idea, poorly executed" vibe from the first frame, ending with the inevitable "dang" sound of a shortened blade spinning down.

Indeed - my first thought looking at the video before things got messy. Any idea what they were trying to accomplish ?

Practising snow landings for Ukraine??? Poorly executed whatever it was.

Reminiscent of the German Police 155/332 collision a few years ago.

212, that’s exactly what went through my mind, too. Far safer to go in as singletons, so that the first aircraft on the ground becomes your visual reference, having hopefully cleared a lot of the loose snow.

But then a zero speed, or slow forward speed landing is a far better option if the slope allows it.

Mighty nice of the US military to help keep Sirkorsky's revenue numbers up. At this rate they may knock Kenya's training record into second place.

Too soon.....?
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a1fe5d434d.jpg

Hahahahahhah. That's brilliant Gordy.

It's one thing to hit brown/ white-out situations at new unfamiliar LZs during a life or death mission or other mitigating circumstance. Unless landing on clean concrete, looking out for the first signs of an impending crap storm is part of our pre-landing mental gymnastics....or should be. My exposure to years of training exercises sometimes make me wonder why the term " training accident" is more common than one would think. Isn't the purpose of training to go slow, evaluate conditions, adjust operation accordingly and communicate before, during and after operations? Then review and discuss what went right, what was unexpected and what could be improved. People talk about pilots having to make split second decisions but this seemed to go on and on and then on some more with no adjustment of plan. I hope these guys go on the circuit and explain how they spent a huge amount of taxpayer cash and that they now see that during a training exercise, discretion is always the better part of valor.

It's possible that back in 2000 more or better training would have prevented an H60 from rolling down the side of Mt. Shasta from 12K due to rapid loss of reference but at least they were trying to get to someone in need. Training is the time for things to go smoothly, not just go out and follow the plan profile and for someone in a command position to say " stop now".

We used to call it to "crash into lz" during heliskiing operations, the description for no hover landing in powder snow to avoid white-out. It looks like they took it to next level

And I was thinking the unit commander wanted to go skiing and was just trying to avoid the long lift lines

Hat and coat too the door

Probably too close to the truth for comfort. Snowbird is one of the 4 major ski resorts in the cottonwood canyons and it would not surprise me to hear that they were landing there "as part of their training', but also to get a cool photo to show people. There are PLENTY of other paces to land away from a high density populated ski resort.

Mt. Hood maybe? 2002? USAF H60? Insufficeint power to HOGE? No loss of visual, just needed more-better training interpreting the operator's manul performance data.

They got it.

Yes, but if you're going to run into trouble, it's nice to do it where help will walk [ski] over to see if you're okay!

I understand that in one of Canada's native languages, "snow" is actually described more specifically with one of seven different words. I'm guessing that several of them are "avoid HIGE" type snow!

If you are going to crash - crash in a Black Hawk. It is not by chance that you'll walk away more often than not.