B206 Fatality Maitland NSW
 

VH-PHP by the looks of it, owned by Australian Native Landscapes. Doesn't show up on ADS-B, though one of their previous flights have. Under power until impact...? There be powerlines across the river there...

The ATSB Prelim report is out, and I don't know what to make of it...

For a flight from Casino to Warnervale, it almost looks like he was searching for somewhere specific on the ground south of Dungog, or trying to avoid weather, but the Maitland METAR indicated weather that was conductive to VFR flight, with the report noting "...8 kt of wind with scattered cloud at 4,000 ft and 4,500 ft and overcast cloud at 7,800 ft above the airport. Witnesses reported the weather at the time and location of the accident to be a mid to high level overcast cloud with no rain. A retired airline pilot reported that the ’Weather was suitable for VFR. A general base layer at 5,000 ft. Scattered cloud with patches to the South" which tends to rule that out, and I cant understand the backtracking and violating the restricted area without a pretty damn good reason...

Clearing a ridgeline by only 200' then descending towards the Hunter River isn't indicative of the enroute portion of a flight with another 60 miles to run, but that's what the report indicates happened.

Idungeddit...:confused:

https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/defaul...Figure%203.png

Some kind of progressive incapacitation followed by a rapid debilitating event?

The helicopter sure seemed out of control when it hit the ground. ATSB wrote: "the helicopter impacted the ground at approximately 80° right angle of bank and 60° nose down pitch". Something worrying is that the report indicated a relative contacted the pilot by (mobile) phone at 15:47 to check progress and all seemed well. But by around 15:56 (9 minutes later) the so far unexplained turn was commenced. The report doesn't mention any communications between the pilot and ATC (indicating any sort of distress).

Looking that way. He tracked down the lane like he’d done it many times before. Phone call saying all good. And then, all over the place ?

Lets hope the ATSB take note of the vaccine status of the pilot. If vaxed, when was the most recent vaccine taken ?

It is now proven that the china virus vaccines can have serious side effects with questions now being asked in govenment:

https://joannenova.com.au/2022/11/in...ardiac-issues/

The ATSB don't take gibberish on the internet as factual evidence so they won't be wasting their time going down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole. The autopsy however, should one be possible, might find some sort of medical event that the pilot was experiencing such that his cognitive abilities deteriorated during the flight.

Couldn't have said it better!

Perhaps we should agree that the Medical Examiner and the ATSB can deal with the medical aspects of the investigation and we should take any debate about Covid to the existing threads dedicated to Covid that exist elsewhere amongst the various Forums.

Covid and COVID vaccine arguments belong in this linked Thread unless and until Covid is raised as a possible factor in this particular accident by the ATSB or other official body involved in the Investigation.

https://www.pprune.org/jet-blast/629...us-thread.html

Seems clear to me Binghi that arguing about Covid, as compared to raising an issue re the deceased pilot's possible medical fitness, are too different things and as several comments caused you to take off down the path of arguing about Covid we all got asked to take such posts to the linked thread.

What is so difficult about that to understand and how can you be mystified as to what was said in the post.

And any concerns about commercial pilots flying a few hundred people?

212man, that link isn’t working on my devices.

FB please don’t troll this thread with Covid vaccination discussion. If you reallt think there is merit in discussing possible incapacitation possibly brought on by one or more of the Covid vaccines, start a new thread. And if it doesn’t fly, take it to Jet Blast.

For what it is worth, I am at a loss to grasp why any pilot would fail to grasp why the senator’s questions and conduct towards the AM representatives is wholly inappropriate. He clearly does not know who he is dealing with and what their remit is. We, on the other hand, do. We should expect professional respect for our colleagues, not applaud the cheap, playing to the audiance behaviour of a fool politician.

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...ir/ao-2022-048

report is out

Nowt to do with Covid then, his atherosclerosis will have been building over quite some time.

Some questions and observations resulting from reading the linked article re the Maitland Accident an the other accidents mentioned.

Seems plenty of mention of Cocaine use in these accidents as well as other drugs that are not blessed for use by Pilots.

Should licensed Pilots be required to use only properly licensed and approved medical examiners and risk loss of license should they not do so (meaning having two Doctors with one for normal medical stuff and the Aviation Medical Examiner for only the required physical exams allowing for the lack of a full and complete medical history during Aviation Medical Testing).

The use of "they" and "their" when referring to a single adult male individual seemed a bit odd as well.

I also found the comment about piloting being a sedentary occupation and sudden stressful situations posed potential problems health wise.

Should we include some aerobics, exercise, and fitness training into our requirements for qualification as Pilots?

Should pilots over some stated age be required to undergo a Heart Stress Test along with the ECG testing?

Are we as truthful with the Aviation Medical Examiner as we should be...and thus putting ourselves and our passengers at greater risk of being involved in a fatal accident?

When do we throw In the towel and give up our employment and licenses for medical reasons despite the "system," not being aware of our grounding maladies but we ourselves know of them?

Don't we owe it to our passengers out of a duty to care? What are the legal dangers we incur should it be found out following a fatal accident? Does our Estate wind up in Court being sued by the next of kin of those that were killed at the same time as we are?

Interesting that there is no mention of the pilot's age! Is that also a policy alongside using non-binary pronouns, which the ATSB seem to have adopted?

All those questions come under the heading of professionalism and if you/they/them/whatever are determined to game the system and be dishonest then only getting caught or crashing will stop them/he/she/it.

In Oz we do EKG and stress tests as well. Two of my friends have been detected as having serious heart problems (no evident symptoms) from the test, and one was actually having an attack during the test.
"Are you feeling OK, Noel?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, just fine."
"Stop right now, you are having a heart attack."
"...............oh....."

Same in UK AC, I've done a few 24 hour BP tests and stress ECG treadmill runs in the past as well as ultrasound examination - the cardiologist said he wasn't treating the 58 year old me (as I was at the time) he was treating the 70 year old me to make sure I got there. Low levels of meds have kept BP in limits, diet and exercise does the rest.

There was also an ATSB news release related to the final report: "JetRanger accident highlights importance of pilots properly declaring all medical information":

https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/news-i...al-information

What I find perhaps most disconcerting in the report is this:

"...Also at 1614, the pilot received and answered a call from an unknown person for 27 seconds. The call ended about 60 seconds before the accident. Despite numerous attempts, the ATSB was unable to establish contact with this caller to seek any further information on the situation with the pilot at that time".

To put this call into context, I have attempted to annotate various events in the report roughly when they occurred on the ATSB's Figure 3. This call was after the pair of turn-backs and some low and slow flight. I assume the ATSB has the number of this call, just hasn't reached the caller. Surely that caller could add whether the pilot expressed any concerns such as chest pain. Wouldn't they come forward?


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....209cefd45f.jpg

I really think this was solely incapacitation from coronary artery disease and it is unlikely the other issues played a significant part. The pilot may well have had no specific symptoms and indeed reported he was 'OK' during the event.

It seems the pilot underwent more investigations than was actually required (tested after renewal) and that he was compliant with it. The definitive test is either an angiogram or a CT angiogram and he had the latter so the stress test and ECG are irrelevant as issues with either lead to a CTA. The concern is that the CTA failed to demonstrate the degree of disease found at post mortem. I wont speculate on the reason in public but it shows that our systems are certainly not foolproof. Belated commiserations.