November 2nd 2022 - BBC report heli down in Wales
 

Crash in woodland, four taken to hospital - Link to BBC story

Looks like G-RAYN - Castle Air A109.

Glad they all made it out OK.

Hope those injured make a swift recovery.

AAIB have sent a team: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a...-november-2022

Another report which seems to refer to the same incident: https://www.racingpost.com/news/late...ccident/586585

Pure speculation, but either approach to or departure from a poorly lit site maybe?

h14

Another triumph for VIP onshore "two-crew IFR" ops?

Viewing the BBC article that was linked.....gazing past the paddock gate with the helicopter hiding in the wood line to the right.....away in the distance is wha appears to my old eyes to be a rather odd looking tree with what appears to be a lot of bark missing and it leaning on about a 45 degree angle.

Do others see the same thing?

As we have no credible information at this time and we are all working on pure supposition......I would say that looks odd and let it go at that for the time being.

Well, what is the probability of them having invented a new type of accident? Probably slim.
No serious injuries, it will buff out. :E

I think its your old eyes, the only thing I can see that looks 45 degrees is a bit of hedge sticking out from the gate but looks like its in the background, and the 'bark missing' is a leaf. Maybe its my slightly younger eyes...

Looking at the flights made by the aircraft yesterday, I'm speculating that they were departing from a shoot, perhaps Cyffliliog.

Should have gone to Specsavers....:) That is a twig in the foreground above the gate......

Closer image showing the tailboom is in the field to the left of the fuselage.. they appear to have been very lucky, there is what looks like a tree at an odd angle behind the tail skid, but it also looks dead, storm damage?.

https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2022-...in-north-wales


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....011ca02366.png

It's either 2-crew or its not. There is no grey area or 'pretend' 2-crew ops. But isn't it a bit harsh calling it a 'triumph' when people are in hospital???
Obv the weather was pretty poor last night and looking at FR24 it would appear that this was a departure from the site. It would have also been dark. So many variables. AC mechanical issue ? We don't know and can only speculate. Hopefully they all make a recovery but I have heard that the pax were Sam Thomas and Dai Walters. Horse racing trainer and jockey? I'm sure the AAIB report will be published in about 3 years and we'll get to know the full picture then.

>It's either 2-crew or its not. There is no grey area or 'pretend' 2-crew ops

there is plenty of "pretend" 2 crew ops still going on in the onshore world, and plenty of people poling around using unauthorised IFR approaches etc

i'm not saying this is the cause of this incident, but these onshore "mishaps" do seem to be still occurring (Vauxhall A109, "Paul Mcartney" S76 incident, Starspeed S92 incident etc)

You ain’t wrong!

yes they do still go on and I’m totally against them, especially the ‘VFR’ approach system in the 109SP. But, I reckon this was a departure not an arrival, although I’ve been wrong before, and yes, we’ve seen accidents occur on departure.

ps the Vauxhall accident was a single crew accident albeit wx related.

Apparently a mechanical problem just after takeoff from the shoot with the pilot opting to re land

Surprised there has been no statement from the operator yet (unless I have missed it); we used to have a standard statement prepared in case of incidents so that we could get ahead with any known facts ahead of possible negative media etc. Thankfully we never needed to use it during my 14 years in the industry!!!

……not forgetting that accident occurred almost a decade ago and there is no evidence the pilot was attempting a planned IFR approach. It was a case of continuing to fly under VFR into IMC conditions, not the same thing.

Helicrazi.....I think you are right....it does appear to be a limb of that bush to the side of the gate.

I'll tell the wife, she wont believe it :}

no, but it was another onshore accident with an experienced pilot, where weather/decision making as the cause.

Update on the story (serve me right for posting so early, it didn’t have pictures at 6am when I first came across it): link

I think what you are seeing is a small branch on that gate in the foreground , had to put ma specs on for that one.

Obviously and more than one bad decision was made leading up to it, as is often the case.

(I’m of the opinion that the final bad decision in the events leading up to the Vauxhall accident possibly occurred because the sole pilot was led to believe, from a text received, that Battersea heliport had opened, ie the weather had begun to improve there. He possibly then thought he was looking at a gap in the weather at Chelsea Bridge, rather than Vauxhall Bridge where the tower and crane lurked. This is in no way excuses the decision to let down over a congested area in very poor visibility).

We are getting well off the title subject so I’ll leave it there and if yesterday’s accident was a mechanical failure on departure, all this conjecture is irrelevant anyway.

This looks like a confined area departure at dusk although the video makes it look like proper darkness - is this another poor captaincy decision or an unfortunate mechanical issue?

Night confined areas without NVG? No thanks.

Any link to the video? I can't find it

It's in the initial BBC report in the first link - video has been added

So it is, thanks :ok:

woman in news video says it caught the tree upon takeoff

Welcome to the real world outside of the RAF; that field doesn't look particularly confined in any case. However, night CAs was a routine exercise for military helicopter crews prior to NVG. Arguably, it was even more dangerous when PNG were first used by the RAF in the late 1970s before NVGs became available.

They may not be obvious but are lights required on the ground for an onshore helicopter landing site unless on NVIS? SAR does not require them due to obvious reasons but curious if this is commercial trip.

Anyone able to identify the actual location from the video/photos....?

Shy is right on this.

Being a Dinosaur in this business of flying helicopters but blessed to have flown with NVG's after all those years using just the MK 1's in field operations from no lights beyond a single shrouded flashlight or hand held strobe light in the middle of some of the densest jungle and mountainous areas of the World.....NVG's are the absolute best aid one can use.

To offer a for instance.....we regularly trained in night ops at a remote place in the Southeast of the United States....with no external lights to be seen when we were out at unit authorized VMC minimums.

The LZ was a small flat open area with lots of broom straw field grass which is a light tan color....surround by 80-100 foot tall Pine Trees.

On a zero Moon overcast night....it was black dark out. With NVG's, even at the worst light level it was very easy to fly the circuits and do the landings, hover, and take offs.

We still did them without the NVG's...with no landing lights or nav lights....but it was a very hard thing to do.

Add Nav lights and as you approached the hover the grass would begin to show up visually.....add the rotating beacon and it got better yet.....and of course with the landing lights we were back to normal night ops.....and with the Night Sun on White Light....no problem at all.

With NVG's.....just the Nav Lights. on and it seemed the Landing Light was on when using just bare eyes.

With NVG's using the IR Filter over the Night Sun and the Light tweaked to the Flood Light mode.....again it was very easy.

After you fly with NVG's you do begin to wonder how we ever did it without them.

With practice and learning the limitations of NVG's....using them becomes quite a natural thing.

Combined with FLIR.....the combination of NVG's an FLIR really makes night flying much more safe.

NVGs for onshore ops? Will never happen, the training and currency requirements alone would kibosh it, let alone the cost. Even the police in the UK struggle to maintain currency.

I also don't think CastAir have a multi-crew AOC

I've been out of the industry for a while, but it often used to be the case that if they had landed in daylight, it was acceptable to take off at night with limited lighting e.g. car headlights. Not sure if this is still done?

h14

I flew my first 14 years in the RAF without NVG Shy and that included CAs and field landings including with a crewman on PNG in NI along with some very challenging RNF flying in Cyprus.

I'm sure you will remember the RAF definition of a CA so that field certainly fits.

My point was that CA's without NVGs ramps the risk up markedly and with fare paying pax on board asks a lot of questions about the legality of it.

Can it be done? Sure, like others I have got the T shirt but is it a sensible thing to do on a commercial operation?

What's the CatA performance of a 109 like six-up (ie 5 +1)?
Do we have any idea of where they were going/had come from to judge a fuel load?

They do have multi-crew AOC and I’m led to believe NVIS certification from the CAA but that could be for their HEMS operation in Cornwall not their charter.

All places and times approx.
07:30 Biggin hill towards Chippenham.
08:16 near Bristol towards Caerphilly by 08:40
then northbound past Welshpool to an indicated position west of Wrexham by 09:16
looks like a drop off at the site around 09:16 then up to Chester hawarden area (refuel?) landing there 09:39
lifting Hawarden approx 1350 back to south of Ruthin (landing site)
lifting 17:35? And if routing back same way?

if they all weighed 90kg (they won’t if one was a jockey) do we know if two crew?
with 30kg in the boot and 400kg fuel they’d be at approx mauw. Low temps. Strong wind.

If CAT - AMC2 CAT.OP.MPA.110(b)(2) “For night operations, ground lights should be available to illuminate the runway/final approach and take-off area (FATO) and any obstacles.”

For NCC see AMC3 NCC.OP.110,
For NCO see AMC1 NCO.OP.110.

They all say the same thing, ground lights are required regardless of the type of operation, sufficient to light the FATO and any obstacles.

The only caveat is SPA.HEMS.125(b)(4) which allows the required lighting to come from the aircraft or ground based lights.

Over to you to interpret what is acceptable ‘ground lighting’.

it may have been a "private" (ie non AOC) flight