My instinctive alternate would have been Fairoaks. Away from the urban stuff, good services, and very close. Wonder who suggested Battersea. 20/20 is easy after the event; no doubt the pilot had good reasons, RIP.

With the facts that are now coming out and as an ex helicopter pilot myself I find the sequence of events leading to the accident very strange. Clearly there is more than we currently know for an experienced helicopter pilot to do what he did.

On the face of it flying from Redhill to Elstree to decide to divert to Battersea in these weather conditions was a strange decision. An ILS approach into Heathrow would be the safe option after climbing to a safe altitude. Then the cost of landing at Heathrow could be a factor. But to fly down the Thames to land at Battersea in freezing fog? Odd. Maybe icing was becoming a factor and he did not want to climb? It's all a bit strange at present.

- heading east past Vauxhall??

Acknowledging all the concerns about speculation etc but, this is what Pprune is here for.

If one lines up the crash site on google maps with the tower crane, then extend it northwards, it lines up perfectly with a route that takes you down the RHS of the River Thames (if flying south) past the Houses of Parliament inbound to Battersea. This would undoubtedly be an appropriate point to contact the heliport, so eyes down onto the radio (single crew operation) to change frequency, whilst in and out of the mist and very easy, with the River quite narrow, to miss the right turn, especially in reduced visibility. It would only takes seconds to cover those hundred or so yards.

BOAC, Vauxhall Bridge is east of Battersea Heliport, so I assume he was flying west toward Battersea?

Swerve - I know where Vauxhall is and the heliport.

Read this?
"What I saw this morning was not good: a helicopter flying at about 500ft eastbound along the Thames helicopter route. As it was just passing over Chelsea Bridge" from
Visibility must have been zero, or close to it... The helicopter flew straight into dense fog. As a former pilot, this struck me as peculiar, to put it mildly' - Comment - Voices - The Independent

BOAC, I see your point re this chap's statement. What I don't understand therefore is why the heli is flying in the opposite direction from the standard route I see the helis flying on every day from across the water. Landing either from the west or east but always along the axis of the Thames.

Actually the times do not tally. The witness has a precise time of 7:37 logging into his gym. The flight left Redhill at 7:35. The BBC quote the crash at around 08:00.

The crash site is more consistent with the aircraft heading south, possibly following the river, and possibly missing the sharp bend to the West due to loss of loss of visibility. (Last points pure conjecture obviously)

- I'm not sure what a 'standard route' is on a two way route? To me, flying east on the 'south bank' would be the correct path unless the Rules of The Air are changed in the Heliroutes?

Since the Heliport says London was suggesting a div to them and another report said he was returning to Redhill, the situation is unclear.

opposite to the STANDARD route. you said it, a divert is not STANDARD. If you clear it with atc you can do non standard, no problem.

BOAC, that report in the Independent quotes the observer of the eastbound helicopter as saying he saw it before he clocked into the gym ot 07:37. The crash happened "shortly before 8 a.m." (I haven't seen a more accurate time.)

That suggests to me that the one he saw may have been a different one.

Please use this dedicated thread to record any condolence messages or tributes to Pete Barnes.

Thank you in advance.

DHU and RJ - good points. Missed that!

If it's any help, using the Telegraph photos and google street view this is the view looking North from the impact position, ie. the large area of fire in photo 1

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i1...ps3d48466c.png

<<So ATC knew that Elstree was u/s, probably knew the police helicopter wasn't flying, but still directed him to Battersea ? Euh >>

Which "ATC" was supposed to know that Elstree was not available? ATC could not "direct him to Battersea". ATC cannot order the diversion of an aircraft; that is wholly the pilot's responsibility.

I hope that Pete Barnes is not made into a scapegoat? The weather closed in around him making it very hard to maintain visual references.
Peter Barnes was a highly experienced Helicopter pilot involved in some of the James Bond Helicopter sequences.

A couple of months ago concerns were made over the lihting on the Crane structure amd night only as shown by this tragic accident is NOT good enough for such slender invisible structures in very poor visibility conditions.
I hope the authorities learn from this and have these very high cranes properly lit at all times!

Rhetorical, right now, I guess...

We'll all be interested to learn whether the pilot had declared an emergency, or asked for urgent assistance from the ground. If not, either the pilot was unaware of any imminent danger, or deemed it impracticable for ground to assist; a pilot of his experience might justifiably decide that's the best if he does not have a copilot to assist and the immediate problem needs 100% flying concentration not RT conversation. Or chose not to.

I rather suspect that by now we'd have been told had the pilot declared a mechanical or other problem and those with many years experience will be forming ideas.

In cloud/fog? I don't remember ever having used structure lights other than for visual nav - and then usually on foot/car/boat.

gg- assuming that is is accurate, it would look as if he might have come down the A5 and missed the 'hang a right'?

Pace - I'm not sure lighting it in daylight would help a chopper in those conditions?

Lemain. As he should have been operating under SVFR and Battersea has no radar it would be difficult to know how ATC could assist, short of alerting the emergency services. To obtain radar assistance he would have to go back to Heathrow.

Given the short flight time between Redhill and Elstree I'm surprised neither he or the operator hadn't just called them up and just asked the question "whats the weather like where you are".

Given he lifted at 0735hrs out of Redhill, crashed at 0800hrs in London having found he couldn't get into Elstree -did the weather fundementally change in the time?

The heliroutes have their own specific rules. Helicopters are normally to be flown over the centre of the river where it forms part of the route, unless told by Heathrow Special to fly "northside" or "southside", in the event of opposing traffic needing to pass.

Here's a link to a CAA page which shows some relevant information and a basic chart of the routes: http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/7/EIS%2006.pdf

Lemain

Not sure from your profile if you are a helicopter pilot.

I read through this thread start to finish. Much better information / speculation on the Rotorheads thread, though there is some "tosh" there also. Some of the speculation here is not relevant to helicopter operation, or to helicopters in the London Zone, or to a twin helicopter (not a single) in that environment.

To sumerize, the flight was from Redhill to Elstree 1 POB. Working Heathrow Special, entered the zone. Being a twin, helirouts are not mandatory. Elstree was not possible due to deteriorating weather so RTB requested, as Redhill remained clear. On the way back, asked HRS for a divert to Battersea - (speculation) weather closed in on him? Diversion cleared with Battersea by HRS and given. No radio contact made with Battersea and the rest is on the news.

Ta, ST - I note that ref does not specify 'middle of the river' per se.

NB This is more for my interest than in relation to this accident, as it was a twin.

Actually, BOAC, to be perfectly correct, I should have written "between the high and low water marks", rather than the centre of the river. However, that is a distance of a few yards.

Here we have an approach to Heathrow which takes up everything down to 3,000 feet. Under that is the easterly approach to London City, which was indeed on easterlies this morning (although, being down there at the time, most of these ended up as missed approaches periodically audible in the fog up above). Squeezed under all this is H4, a standard helicopter routing which follows the river, maximum altitude 1,000 feet, and even for those not following this track, is the routing into London's principal heliport, which is riverside.

Then a developer proposes and builds a huge high rise (higher than the BT Tower), in isolation from the groups in The City and Canary Wharf, and which now dominates the skyline (when Cavok) in inner south-west London, 600 feet (181m) high, and right on the river (and the aforementioned helicopter route), and with a crane alongside which reaches well above this maximum.

And then we say we take risk assessments seriously ...... but somehow the tower is hit before it is even completed.

I wonder who the developer thinks they are going to let/sell the upper floors to now.

@Lemain
Thank God a voice of reason.
I'd also be inclined to take in very good faith the statement from Battersea Heliport. It says what it says.

Aah... but you don't understand the business model of these hideous London monstrosities that keep on popping up around the place.

All the prime stuff in the developments (i.e. "penthouse suites" at the top of the building etc.) are sold off-plan on day one to gullible foreigners (or even before day one at international tradeshows). Most of whom have probably not even visited the "marketing suites" which are the first thing the developers build on the plot.

So the question is not who the developer is going to let/sell to.... but rather who the poor sod who bought the thing is going to let/sell to.

I see / hear a lot of media reference to the Police helo 'electing' not to fly.
Is this a fact that was officially & publicly acknowledged anywhere?

It seems to me that the 'media' seems to making this some sort of benchmark, as if METPOL helo's are some form of air gods and if they don't fly no one else should.
My general but limited knowledge of police helo work is generally in response to operational needs i.e. chasing the bad guys, and if vis is low and operating in a more 'random' fashion across built up areas as opposed to flying heli routes would make their decision making process very different from normal commercial ops wouldn't it?
And if the vis is low it renders the helo as an aerial observation platform rather useless as even the FLIR suffers from reduced vis doesn't it?

Talking about poor sods, what about the unlucky one who was walking underneath at the time?

Ref: the innocent victim, couldn't agree more. I think whilst natural that here the majority might moan about the media trying to blow this up in the end given the events it's hardly a surprise.

It's not surprising in the sense that all most of the media are interested in are audience ratings rather than any altruism for reporting the "facts".

Given that probably a handful of people will be killed on Britain's roads today then why don't they give those "innocents" similar coverage?

Don't misunderstand me I regard the loss of any life in this type of event as a tragedy but I have to say I despise the media and some of the reporting I have heard about makes me feel angry to say the least.

It was a t-w-a-t post on a different day (22 october 2012)

The flying boys in blue were grounded, and so whilst bored twiddling their thumbs they allegedly emitted a t-w-a-t that allegedly read as follows :

"Good afternoon. Well, as London's fog is keeping us on the ground at present, we thought we'd be here to answer any Qs you have about ASU..."

The reason it is in the meeeejaaaa is because, someone allegedly did ask a question....

"@MPSinthesky Funny you should ask. Cranes have red light so aircraft can see, yes ? Crane atop new tower at Vauxhall had none y'day. Problem ? "

To which answer came there none, hence the meeeja are wetting their pants at the prospect the light might have been broken since October !

I'm not so sure that they don't get covered, like this from last month for example:-

M1 Crash: The '140mph death race' that killed two | Mail Online

Given some of the other utter guff published in newspapers a helicopter crashing from the sky in central London was always going to grab attention.

That said I'm not all that sure what is in the media that gets people steamed up. Maybe there are some elements of detail that are not relevant but look someone died on the pavement doing nothing more than going about their daily business 25 mins after a pilot lifted and then called for a weather divert. How much do you think that family cares about the minutiae of aviation procedures?

You're not sure are you ?

Have you watched any of the major news channels ? Have you read the major papers ?

The way they cover aviation events is despicable, complete sensationalism, nothing else.

I mean, just look at some of the headlines from today :

Horror and chaos follow London chopper crash
A 'miracle' deadly chopper crash wasn't worse
Witnesses had to run for their lives as debris and flames rained down
Fiery chopper crash near British spy agency
Woman witnesses London 'copter crash horror
Copter inferno after pilot hits high-rise crane
2 die as chopper falls into crane on tower

And that's just the headlines from a few of the articles ! The articles themselves are strewn full of un-necessary padding to make the whole thing sound like it was the apocalypse.

Meanwhile, the TV meeja were doing the usual waste of time and resources "rabbit in headlight" tricks .... plus calling in 'experts' that were anything but !

Would you fly in this?
LONDON/CITY EGLC 160820Z 34003KT 0700 R09/0800 R27/0750 FZFG BKN001 M03/M03 Q1012

Mixture, has it been reported any differently from anything else?

Actually those headlines you post none of them are untrue are they. People did run for their lives and given the time and place it is a miracle more people didn't get caught up in it.

It depends. Presumably a twin engined helicopter would have no trouble flying on top of this type of weather (am assuming radiation fog which isn't too thick) whilst enroute?

The Oxford dictionary defines "news" as :

newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent events


As far as I'm concerned, any manner of presenting news that involves words such as horror, chaos,miracle or inferno does not count as news. Its a pure attempt to increase audience/readership figures by purporting to have a more exciting story to tell.... because that is what it is.... telling a story .... not relaying the news.