Night engine out auto: video link
 

Nothing except for the link, here.

Looks as if it could have been painful at the end, does anyone have any further details?

It was San Antonio PD in Texas last week. Either a 500 E or a 333.
Both guys were released from hospital after a check up. Aircraft totaled.

John,

That was the San Antonio PD Schweizer 333 that crashed last Thursday following power loss. The crew suffered minor injuries.


I/C

Jesus!!

Looked like it hit very hard but well done to the pilot for making sure he and the crew could walk away!!

The audio gives the video a stark reality which put the hairs on the back of my neck up!

These days I work in police aviation in the UK (I know we have two engines!) but major problems low level at night over a built up area have got to be one of my nightmares.

Very glad to hear the guys were safe - it sounded like a bit of a team effort!

:ooh:

Far out! That was indeed hair raising stuff!
Damm good effort to the guys involved and glad to hear they are ok.
Hughesy

thanks john, what a descent.

i guess the pilot had a much better view than we got through the camera but he did a great job on the 360 +.

the observer must have been a pilot too judging by the instructions he was yelling out, the pilot was quite calm with the descent and the mayday call, very precise.

was that a ball on a wire passing in front of the machine??

great job, bad luck on the heavy ending. :ok: :=

SAPD helicopter makes crash landing
Updated: 2/19/2004 8:00:53 AM
By: News 9 San Antonio Staff

http://news9sanantonio.com/media/200...agle_Crash.jpg


San Antonio Police Department Chief Albert Ortiz called today's emergency landing "textbook."

He said both pilots, who were identified as Edward Ramirez, Jr. and Mike Welborn, reacted calmly when they were forced to set down the SAPD helicopter known as Eagle.

The pair attempted to make the landing in the H-E-B parking lot at 735 SW Military Dr., near Pleasanton Road, when parts of the aircraft caught on power lines, officials said.

The helicopter skid across the H-E-B parking lot.

The two pilots experienced engine trouble about one minute after launching from Stinson Airport to assist in a chase, officials said.

Witnesses on the ground said they heard a loud 'bang' and then saw flames coming from the helicopter.

The copter skid across the South Side grocery store parking lot and landed in some debris.

Area police officers along with San Antonio Fire Department rescue crews responded to the crash site.

Neither pilot was seriously injured, but both were taken to the hospital for observation.

The Federal Aviation and National Transportation Safety Board were notified of the accident and will conduct their routine investigations.

SAPD also confirmed this particular aircraft has the same tail number as one that was involved in a similar emergency land in April 2003 at the Alamodome.

Authorities said the helicopter — which is one of four in the fleet — is beyond repair. Estimated costs, including police equipment, is about $1 million.

Police said all of their helicopters receive inspections every 100 hours of airtime.

Both pilots have more than 10 years experience.

Ramirez has been an Eagle pilot for three years. Welborn, a 26-year-old veteran with the force, has flown in the fleet for seven years, officials said.

Fellow pilot Sgt. David Torres, who saw the pilots shortly after their crash, said their concerns for the helicopter and the chase they originally launched to assist.

Good auto and great situational awareness to find a spot in the middle of a built up area. Shame of the powerlines though (they seem to be everywhere!).

On an other note : Flying in a single engine helicopter, low level, at night over a big built-up area, is that legal in the US?

Here in Holland you have to have a twin engine to fly over built up area's (single engine allowed if you have enough altitude to autorotate to the borders of the built up area).

Good to know that the two pilots had only minor injuries and that they could walk away from their craft!

DJG

.... how scary is that !!!! :ooh: Hope this will NEVER happen to me. Well done to the crew to make it to that parking lot - and walking away from it! :ok:

Just out of interest, I've not flown this type before and can't identify the aural warning in the background which seems to coincide with the engine failure and seems to be on all the way down. Fire seems to be the obvious one can anyone confirm that?

Woolf

Amazing footage....congratulations to the crew they did a fantastic job.
Wires everywhere I'm sure,there was no way they could have been avoided at night given their situation.The most important aspect was the pilot flying located his forced landing area and went for it,he may have had it in his mind anyway as a forced landing area before the incident, as we all do,or should.
As I always used to say to my students"if the engine quits now where are you going land".This was an extreme example....hats off to you both!

On the footage I thought I heard the engine surge and saw the ac yaw before the bang ....anyone else notice?
:ok:

Delta Julliet Golf - single-engined over built-up areas is very common in the States and a source of wonderment / envy to accountants on this side of the Atlantic.

Brrrr, Man that was a scary video to watch. I watched it before reading all of the posts underneath. Very good to know they got out. Didn't seem like it was gonna end well when the video stopped. Good work everyones part there.

Floats, I noticed the surge too, seems to be a second or so before complete failure.

woolf:The first tone is the Engine Out. The second one seems to be generated from the police department radio. I doubt the 333 has a fire-warning anything.

arm the floats:Hard to tell from the two times I saw it, but there does seem to be a lot of yaw instability in that ship. Are all 333's that bad?. Was one of those left swings due to the engine-failure? Can't say. You can definitely hear the generator noise surging, but it doesn't begin to wind down until after the one big left yaw.

All in all, it took about thirty seconds from failure to touchdown. Seemed like an eternity while watching it. Probably a lot less from the vantage point of the crew.

Great job by the pilot. Too bad the wires didn't show up on the FLIR.

It's always a good result when the crew escape a crash like this one but before you all congratulate the Pilot on an outstanding job, I would raise the following criticisms and ask the following questions:

Based solely on the video evidence the 333 clearly suffered an engine power loss. The non handling Pilot had to tell the handling Pilot twice to enter Auto. The immediate actions following an engine failure should be instinctive. Based on the video, the Pilot was slow to react.
During the turn or in fact at any time, the Pilot said nothing and approaching the ground did not attempt to fly a technique that would arrest the rate of descent, reduce the forward groundspeed and rate of closure. The non handling Pilot screams for a flare as the video stops suggesting the handling Pilot was not up with the situation and was fixated by events (wires and ground rush).

Questions:

During the conversion to type of this helicopter for this job how many full engine out landings are practised?

If the perception of a 'veteran' is one of a Pilot age 26 with only 7 years experience, then what is the definition of an experienced Pilot?

If that landing was 'textbook' as described by the Police Chief, can I get a copy?

In my opinion, this is a case of better being lucky than good.

flygunz.....don't be a nob.
If you were flying and I was sitting there I would be shouting out advice as well. Human nature in a situation of high stress.

My own observation from a position of having a little bit of 300 time, was that the airspeed seemed to drop off a lot. But hey!, I wasn't there...... good effort.

At least after listening to the yelling in the background I have a better idea what this CRM is all about. Any guesses on the height he was travelling at when it all went pearshaped.

I've just stared flying in the city again after a few years in the bush and I've got to say that there doesn't seem to be much room down bellow in the event of problems. Add to that the difficulties of darkness & I think they can be well pleased with the result

flygunz - I think your criticism is a bit too harsh!

I think the reason the pilot seems so silent is that his intercom and the atc radio are not recorded on the cameras sound recording system. Only the observers comments and radio comms with the police unit are audible. I also think that when the observer called for "auto .... auto" the helicopter is already descending and in a right hand turn which would suggest the pilot did react immediately. It's difficult to judge speed and rates of descent from the video but in my opinion the speed was not that high on impact and considering the fact that they did make the parking lot does suggest good flying technique and situational awareness. I have listened to the sound over and over again and I think the observer doesn't actually shout "flare, flare" but "wire, wire" but I might be wrong. Even so the pilot might have elected to go for a constant attitude landing which might have been more appropriate in the circumstances. The fact that they struct the wire did obviously mess up the last bit of the landing but considering they walked away from this impact unharmed I think the pilot did manage to reduce rate of decent quite effectively.

Just my opinion.

Woolf

Woolf
Thanks for the constructive reply, I defer to your knowledge about the intercom recording and withdraw my remarks about the apparent silence form the handling Pilot.
Harsh or not though, my criticisms are based on what the video has revealed and I stand by my observations. I listened again to the final part and still think it's Flare thats shouted.

Your point regarding Situational Awareness is, like mine, subjective and I believe that for short periods in the descent SA was lost. I base that solely on the definition of SA:

'The accurate perception of the factors and conditions affecting the aircraft and aircrew during a specific period'

There are two side issues to this post. Firstly, had the outcome been anything but minor injuries then I wouldn't have posted but as I see it, this video raises a host of handling and CRM issues and If just one young Pilot learns something from this debate then it's worth it.
Secondly, I think that the release of this video into the public domain presumably during the FAA investigation, is at best insensitive to the crew and at worst a complete lack of managerial judgement.

Flygunz

In your earlier post you say
when in actual fact the statement says
Small point maybe but I think that the statement should have read that he had been with the force for 26 years, not that he was 26 years old.

Aside from that, well done to the crew concerned for getting it down.

Edited for lousy spelling

Flygunz,
I have no time on the type that crashed, but on my A/C the best range and min RoD speeds are significantly lower than cruising speed. So perhaps the delay as you perceived it was caused by the pilot flaring the ship to either of these speeds.

Furthermore, I agree with Woolf in that I also heard "WIRE" and not "Flare". I don't know if the observer in that operation is an active pilt and has acces to controls, but as a NH pilot in an emergency, I'd be shouting advice as well, I suppose..something about human nature.

They survived, the A/C hit wires and did not. We'll just have to wait for the results of the investigation.
But in my mind it clearly shows the madness of operating single engine over hostile terrain.

FlyGunz.........I have to agree with you. However, I was always taught and subsequently taught others that the technique to use at night is the "constant attitude" autorotation, maintaining the landing light in a stable position where the pilot can see the landing area clearly.

The pilot was very slow in entering auto. A 360 auto from approx 800' is not the best idea at night, unless he knew exactly where he was going to touch down.

Did the pilot at the controls do anything to arrest the rate of descent??

Kudos to the crew, they walked away from it.

Are you sure the "auto" is not the co-pilot encouraging the auto relight to kick in?

First and foremost, congrats to the pilot for getting them on the ground and walking away.
I am a newbie, bigtime, but that seemed like an extremely weak flare. Seems to me that a more agressive flare would have slowed the rate of descent much more and maybe the pilot was pulling a little too much collective too soon and lost the blades enertia. Seemed like a really hard impact to me.

Im a newbie as well but there seems like a lot of lazyboy quarterbacking going on here. Let the engine crap out on you at night (my worst fear) and see how you really handle it. Whatever he did got them down safely and he only had 30 seconds to make 8 million decisions. Now we get the pleasure of sitting and stewing over it? What ever he did worked, job well done.

Like I said, first and foremost.:ok:

KennyR
Good to hear from you! You are right about the accepted tecnique for a night auto is the constant attitude, generally around 40kts G/S and if you remember these are practised using a large landing area from an reasonable height. Reason... higher ROD than at Min ROD speed and a longer, faster run on requiring a clearer area. This guy had most of the cards stacked against him and I would suggest that a variable flare would have been a prefered technique. My point and I say again to all, based on the video, is that it appears that no attempt was made to do anything during the final stages as the Ac closed to the ground.

Jcooper & D-U
If I understand the correct meaning of 'lazy quarterbacking' I suspect you mean armchair sniping?
Not the case, you just develop an analytical and dispassionate way of looking at crashes after a few investigations.
Also as it was put in the public domain it's there to be commented on.
What I hope from this and I don't mind taking the odd bit of abuse as I take a non emotional position, is that the debate not only promotes the 'how would I do it' thought but raises the awareness of all of you young bucks who have to fly singles over built up areas as a matter of course leading to better Flight Safety.

S76 Heavy
I think the finance department of most Police districts determines the type of helicopter that is used, it's only legislation from the FAA that will make it safer for the Police Units.

Can anyone answer my first question yet?

Airmail. Strange use of the English language if thats the case.

Flugunz:

Funny how one interprets the incoming information, eh:

I saw it as an engine failure followed by the flying pilot urging the machine to get established into its auto sequence (i.e. praying for the revs to recover/attitude, etc).

The yawing (or see sawing horizontal motion) leads me to suspect that this a/c is non SAS, and the pilot is a little tense on the pedals.

Finding that landing site at night in a built up area AND getting it safely down AFTER a wire strike, to me: is an exceptional feat worth every ounce of praise that guy gets.

The "flare, flare" call could in my humble opinion, be the handling pilot talking his way thru the manouevre, under stress...willing it to adopt the correct attitude, ROD reduction and Nr rise.


Two people watching the same video and two different stories...interesting.

Either way Flygunz, you speak as if he could have and should have done better.....how would you have reacted?????

I must however, insist that IF this had gone pear shaped and they had crashed into a busy road, or built up area, then the story would have been told differently -
this has got to be an advert for NOT flying singles over built up areas, surely?????

Thomas
Read back on the thread and you will find a comment where the audio recorded is that of the observer not the handling Pilot. My comments are based on the fact that the voice we hear is the non handling Pilot.

Not wishing to repeat myself but I criticise the late entry into Auto (based on the audio) and what appears to be no attempt to lessen the arrival at the scene of the crash. I do not criticise the turn to the landing area and agree the guy did a good job from what looks like a lowish height. I won't comment on the possible tense pedal action as I wasn't there but the yawing is consistent with engine Tq fluctuations prior to a failure.

I stand by my previous comment about the Flare call.

As to whether I think he should have or could have done better, pretty irrelevant as they both walked away. I suppose I could join the backslapping brigade and leave it there. But let me ask you this as I know your position, take the video clip and use it as teaching tool for Police Pilots flying singles over built up areas. If you tell me that you could not find anything in it to highlight that would enable others to do a better job then Ok, I'll rethink, after all this is what it's all about, learning from incidents like this.

How would I have reacted, impossible question and you know that, but I've had my fair share which is why I feel I can comment.
I can tell you one thing though, my last single type was the Koala and under the same circumstances would have had great difficulty in reaching the same landing point..... :uhoh:

I agree with you that singles over bulit up areas is a risk. The FAR/AIM rules for helis are more lax than the UK but my opinion is that all Police helicopters in the US should be twins.

Lots of suggestions/advice and criticism here, but I think some people may be forgetting the correct technique for S.E. failure at night over a city.
This is quite simply to use whatever means you can to ensure you walk away without injury.
The pilots involved in this accident obviously used this technique with exceptional skill.:ok:

Am I missing something, how can you judge weather he entered Auto late, and not aiming to get max distance?

At any given time over the U.S there are hundreds and hundreds of single engine police helicopters in operation.
By being forced to upgrade to Twin engines, Law enforcement agencies will have to reduce the number of helicopters in the air. Considering that it is quite rare for a modern turbine to flame out, and how useful these machines are I don't think we should be pushing for this just so a couple of politicians can claim some sort of victory.

Air ops over London are now limited to the very wealthy and the massive budget commercial companies, In theory it makes sense but considering the massive amount of succesful single turbine engine ops over places like L.A, which is far more congested, we shouldn't really be encouraging it.

If you don't feel comfortable yourself then don't do it, but don't push to stop others from flying, lets be realistic here, there are far more dangerous things to worry about, living in a city, the chances of a helicopter landing on top of you are quite remote.

well said autosync, twin may be safer, but the costs associated with operation would effectively put many law enforcement agencies out of business, thereby reducing public safety, i will fly anytime over cities at night in turbine single. i flew with the san antonio group just weeks ago in the same aircraft, highly skilled and very professional. kudos to the crew
dr

Stabilized camera's
 

Hi guys,

After using stabilized camera's now for a bit, there is evidence to suggest that any flare that the pilot may have made would not be shown on the footage.

The camera's will normally try and stay on the last position where the observer had place it....... As the aircraft flares, the stabilizing system will keep the picture in the same spot.

We start to lose some perspective when we introduce stabilized footage.

food for thought.

I guess that we assume that he entered auto late because the other seat yelled for the handling pilot to enter auto. No matter what type of auto you are contemplating you still have to enter full auto then adjust ROD, speed, RRPM to whatever type you have selected. The lack of flare to reduce forward speed is very apparent in the video, when the other seat yells "flare" (and I have listened to it many times). It also looks like there was little or no attempt to reduce ROD with pitch at the final moment.

Just my humble opinion folks after doing hundreds of "full autos" as our colonial bretheren like to refer to an EOL.

Like most of you (probably), I've watched this video clip many times using Windows Media Player in full screen mode. My observations:

1. What causes an Allison to quit like that? Did he run out of fuel? The engine surges noticeably before signing-off "softly." No BANG! or anything, it just kind of spools down. Almost as if...well, you know.

2. The "C'mon, auto. C'mon, auto!" remark is curious. Perhaps the PF was a little slow reacting to the engine failure? If he was a little slow getting the pitch down, maybe the rrpm wasn't all that great during the descent (it is after all basically a TH-55 rotor system). We can clearly see that he did not aggressively flare to get it back...

3. As the sequence begins, the camera is pointing downward at some angle. Seems like about twenty degrees or so to me, might be more. Definitely not straight out at the horizon. After the engine failure, the camera aims very steeply at the ground.

4. Toward the end of the clip, we are suddenly looking straight outward. If the camera did not adjust its vertical angle (either on its own or manually), then this indicates to me that the aircraft must have assumed at least a twenty degree nose-up attitude. In other words, the PF *did* flare, and he must have started that flare above the height of the wires. It's true that the RoD does not *seem* to decrease much, but it's hard to tell. Perhaps there was not a whole lot of rrpm for there to be any flare effect.

5. At the very last second, the voice on the tape shouts two words. After repeated listenings, I think he says, "Wire! WIRES!"

So hard to tell much from that little video clip. But it's a wild ride, eh?...even knowing that it won't be our backs hurting after the tape ends. Good job to the PF. Glad I wasn't in his shoes that night.

So to recap then - without knowing whether we are listening to the handling pilot or the non handling pilot; without knowing whether the FLIR picture is gyro-stabilised or not; without knowing what the weather conditions were at the time and without knowing what caused the engine to fail:

Without any of this information we are prepared to argue about what the crew should and shouldn't have done and make a decisions regarding their competence, professionalism and CRM and then try to interpret the words on the tape to fit our pre-conceived ideas of what went on!

I hope:
a. I never have an accident and b. If I do, that it is investigated properly before people start slagging me off.

Well I think if it gets posted on here it is going to get commented on. And I'm sure that each of us at the end of the day spend at least a little time reflecting on what went we did well and what we did less than well on the days flights.

I manage to walk away from most of my landings these days but that doesn't mean that there is nothing to be learned from the flight.

I don't think any of the comments here have been personal and I'm sure if we are not able to cop a bit of dissection & discussion of our thoughts and actions then probably we are in the wrong business. ( better off in medicine or law where you are always right) sorry F.L.

Total agreement with crab for what its worth. We don't know anything about this besides a damn video tape. We shouldnt jump to conclusions, cause if we do, we are probably in the wrong buisness

As there has been zero discussion or acknowledgment of my comment:

Are you sure the "cmon auto, cmon auto" is not the co-pilot or pilot encouraging the auto relight to kick in?

It seems that many of you have made your minds up already with the very limited information that is available!

Crab, unlike you to miss the point and not add something useful.
My intention here was to raise awareness in the civilian sector, an area where most Military Pilots, cocooned in a sound working and training environment, have little idea of the differences. The video clip was put on the internet and therefore is open to comment. I've made mine and and believe my criticisms to be
firm and fair. Take the time to read the previous posts.

A couple of issues have surfaced as a result of this thread and I'll start two more for comment. I think this one has seen it's day but in respect to dzeroplus, I read your post but didn't feel qualified to reply, left that to a current on type dude!