What would you do..
 

If you were informed you aircraft had hit a tree by ATC would you:

a) continue, board your pax and depart using the phrase "It'll be alright I'm not going far"

b) Shut down have a look to make sure it's all OK then continue

Answers on a postcard to...

It didn't actually happen to me. I stood and watched it in disbelief (it wasn't a small tree!!), then phoned ATC where the incident happened..

Come on, Mag, you're making a point aren't you?

Shut down and call and engineer?

Which part hit?

Phil

Hi Paco

A tree engineer or heli engineer :O

I would also shut down and call the engineer, I hit a few pigeons a few years ago on take off, Put 2 big dents on the underside of each main rotor (Fist size) Better safe than sorry.

No point to make.

Just after some opinion on what others would have done. Several of us stood there not believing what we'd seen and the aircraft just departed without shutting down for a look at what damage had been done (if any), but surely better to check than to assume.

The main blades hit the tree.

I once saw a C-130 hit the rudder of an ATR72 with its wing tip as the C-130 was taxing to an active runway, the C-130's Nav light fell to the ground, and the ATR had a "bite" in its rudder as big as watermelon,

Now once this happened, someone ran out of the C-130 with the engines still running, looked at the wingtip, picked up the broken nav light and ran back into the aircraft . . . . .
About 3 minutes later after taxing to the active, the C130 was airborne.

I have video I got with my handicam of this incident as it happened.

It amazes me there are so many lunatics out there who are prepared to go air-borne with an even greater possibility of the piece of tin they are travelling in falling apart.
There must be some sane Helo drivers out there. Or am I just a coward?

H.

Call an engineer.

Take the rest of the week off.

Magbreak

Wasn't Tuesday afternoon was it ?

Personally i'd go with the shut down and call an engineer option, assuming the type wasn't cleared for tree cutting !

V.

Anyone seen that giant pink tree, in the middle of the open field down by the M23/M25 junction? Wierd !!

May have been!!:O

Mr Squirrel,

It's red and it's art. The little Spankfaarts want it redone in purple next.

The Red Tree

V

Well it looks pink from 1500' !!

......and what colour do you perceive the fields to be?

VG:D

Thans for the red tree thing, I had been wondering...

There is really only one answer to this question; the pilot has no choice. Here's what the U.S. FAA says about it:Does "hitting something" equate to loss of airworthiness? I think it would be successfully argued by the FAA (in their certificate action against the pilot) that once he became aware that he'd hit something with his aircraft, he could not be certain that the aircraft was still airworthy. Therefore, he would require him to land. Further, it would be a weak argument for the pilot to state, "Well, yeah, I knew that we hit something, but I was sure it didnt cause any structural damage."

Heliport

A sweeping response, how so?

I don't think pilots have exclusive right to common sense, in fact from some of the posts on this forum it appears that a lot of them are devoid of it.

I would like to think that when I have been flying for years and have thousands of hours in my log book I would still have the smarts to realise that having just hit something in my aircraft it might be a good idea to at least check it before taking off, if at all.

I hope you have too.

H.

Maybe it was this guy doing some freelancing on his days off:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...hreadid=170302

:uhoh: