Super Puma down - NSW
 

In a statement, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had responded to a distress beacon signal about 10am on Friday from a US-registered Super Puma helicopter with two people on board, on a flight from Broken Hill to Albury.

A Victorian Air Ambulance helicopter from Bendigo and an AMSA rescue aircraft launched a search, finding a person’s body and another person alive but with serious injuries. The injured person was flown to Hay in NSW and is expected to be flown to hospital in Melbourne.

A local skydiving aircraft assisted with the search, an AMSA spokesman said.

A NSW Rural Firefighting Service spokesman said they were alerted to the crash at just before 11am, with one of its crews heading on to the location. NSW Police have also been in attendance.

Looks like N368EV, SN 2179...

any pics available?

Coming to the end of a fairly long flight, departed Kuala Lumpur 17th November.

Wow. That is sad.

Any updates on the reason for this accident? Seems no additional info coming forward.

I’m hearing T/R drive failure.

Indeed it is. Condolences to friends, family, and colleagues…and hopefully a quick and full recovery to the injured crew..

fp

Where did you hear that from?

The flight path of N368EV out of Broken Hill can be seen on Flight Radar 24, but only for the first 8 minutes at which time it was on a steady heading at 3425 ft barometric altitude and speed of around 130 knots.
Crash location was much further along, reported as 15km west of One Tree which in turn is about 36km NW of Hay, NSW.
They departed Broken Hill at 7:59am (21:29 UTC) and ELT is reported to have activated around 10am local time. But since Broken Hill is in ACDT zone while crash location is in AEDT zone, that equates to about 1.5 hours flight time and covering ~380km of the ~680km leg to Albury.
From various sites such as NAFC and helis.com it appears the Super Puma was being flown to Australia to provide support for the bush fire season in Victoria as Helitak 340.
Another sad loss.

A brief summary of the accident now listed on ATSB website, but no indication of possible cause, though a preliminary report may be released in about 2 months:

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...rt/ao-2024-060

Sad news. RIP.

SIN 4082-S-64-rev-0-EN (1) released today fracture of sliding sleeve and a fracture of tail rotor control rod suspected

where do you find this? Got a link or screen shot?

Please. Can you provide the link.
Many thanks

I cannot download as not posted 8 messsges download refused

Facebook user Pravin Menon posted some photos of N368EV as it was travelling through Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah airport (SZB) in Kuala Lumpur on 16 Nov 24 presumably in transit to Australia.

Attempt to include the Facebook link doesn't seem to work on PPrRuNe when posted in original form, or even after adding a few spaces. So anyone who wants to see them, search directly in Facebook for N368EV. Photos show the configuration of the helicopter with large bubble windows on both cockpit doors.

Let's see if this link works.....it was sent to me by PM when the original Poster was unable to do so.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ce733cf1a1.png

The link worked, thanks.

SMOUFW reported word of TR drive failure while As332|12 referred to fracture of TR control sleeve and control rod (per the link), both sound different. But is the incident in the notice referring to N368EV or perhaps another recent AS332L1 case? If the same accident, then clearly the emergency landing ended badly given one of the crew sadly died as a result.

For the reported incident, wonder what fractured first, the control rod or the sliding sleeve? The sliding sleeve has some unusual discontinuities based on the section drawing in the notice. I wonder why that was needed? Super Puma tail rotor assembly is quite different on latest models, not least being a 4 blade tail rotor rather than 5 blade on the AS332L1.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e497e2a848.png