BCAS helicopter pilots have some splaining to do

[bandaid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ZrUm3QweE

[North Shore]

Ahhh...OOPS?

Dunno much about heli flying, but it would seem somewhat logical to me that in a confined area, you'd exit the same way as you entered?

Any helo drivers care to comment? STL?

Edited to add: I'm assuming they came in straight down the road, so why not (knowing the cables were there) either a) go straight up, or b) back up until the field is abeam, then go sideways until you can get a clear run through the field. That all being said, i wonder if they "forgot' that the cables were there?

[Heliian]

Good training video.

[duramaxguy]

road is doable...field would be smarter....he gets the dumb shit award for turning his tail towards the wires.....paying too much attention to the audience

[bizjets101]

C-GHJT Helijet Sikorsky S76-A Maple Ridge BC March 17/2011

CADORS 2011P0343

Pitt Meadows RCMP report a Medivac flight operated by Helijet International Sikorsky S76A (C-GHJT) was departing from a Farm on McNeil Road at 16:10 PDT with four people on board for Vancouver General Hospital when it stuck a wire. The helicopter landed safely in a field, no injuries reported. Damage to the helicopter is reported as the tip caps on the main rotor.

From BCLocalNews.com

An Air Ambulance clipped telephone wires while trying to fly out a man who injured his back Wednesday afternoon while pruning trees in Pitt Meadows.

The man was standing in the bucket of a tractor on a property off McNeil Road when he lost his balance and fell 4.5 metres into a ditch.

“He was half in the water and half out,” said Pitt Meadows assistant fire chief Brad Perrie.

Firefighters lifted the man out of the ditch and transported him to a helicopter, which had landed on McNeil Rd. As the helicopter took off, its rear rotor hit an overhead phone line.

As the helicopter took off, its rear rotor hit an overhead phone line.

Dan Froom, executive director of the B.C. Ambulance Service, said the pilot felt vibrations after hitting the wires and landed the helicopter in a nearby field .

Firefighters transferred the injured man into a waiting ambulance, which transported him to hospital via road.

The helicopter remained in the field overnight.

“The helicopter needed to be checked out to make sure it was safe,” Froom explained.

[Heliian]

People make mistakes and I'm sure the pilot won't ever do that again. After having a good look, the landing are is doable and it was a judgement error that caused the wire/bladestrike.

The news story is downplaying the damage quite a bit and it's MAIN rotor struck first, with possible debris in the tail rotor too. It's way more than just tip cap damage and I'm pretty sure both main and tail rotors will have to be removed, along with a complete sudden stoppage inspection of the drive train and engines. I'm not a 76 guy but on some helicopters, other components like driveshafts and bearings would have to be scrapped, Even if there is no "visible" damage. Not a big deal though, the engineers will have er back in the air in no time, your tax dollars hard at work.

I've never been a fan of the 76 as medevac machine, it's too big and with the wheels, landing areas are limited, same goes for the 139's. The advantage those corportate machines have is speed, a private company would have a hard time making money with them otherwise but why save taxpayers money when you can throw it around like confetti. Medevac operators provide a great lifesaving service and should be gov. funded but the spending can get out of control. Did ornge really need to buy 139's? does anyone know how much that transition cost?

[iflyforpie]

Just because something is doable doesn't mean you should do it. This landing site left no room for error, and a bit of drift on liftoff that would have been no problem anywhere else (even in a cleared site the same size that might have left some green on the rotor tips) did severe damage to the aircraft.

Just glad that nobody was hurt or killed.

[r22captain]

The transition cost for Orange is huge. More then it should be.

At least someone is setting the bar with new technology.....can't be flying A models forever. Well we can but who wants to!?
.....but I don't want to start the orange drama on here.

Glad everyone was ok first of all.

Heliian......no ones tax dollars will be paying for this.....HeliJet's a private comapny, paid X number of dollars a year....
they pay for it in a round about way through the contract. But no different then having a bladestrike on forestry. They don't fork over a $100,000 check.

None of us were at the scene and have no place to comment on the size of the hole judging from a video. Maybe they approached the field in the first place then hovered over to the road?

[r22captain]

I was bored and like playing devils advocate
I'd say area was more then adequate
http://maps.google.ca/maps?client=safar ... .19,,0,4.7

[Heliian]

BCAS may be more self sufficient than Ornge, but both are government funded programs. I'm not just talking about having to pay for the bladestrike, more the general operating budget. I think they do it a lot better in BC, Ontario has high taxes and that gives government funded programs lots of our cash to do what they like. In ontario, if a private company tried operating the way that they do, they wouldn't even get off the ground. When MOH switched from the from the 212 to the 76 their range and speed was increased but their off site landing capability was slashed, the attempt at using the BK117 was a fail, due to lack of support available. Now with the 139, the operating costs are way higher and the capabilities are only increased slightly. Personally, I think that they could have done better with a larger fleet of smaller a/c like the 135, 145 or 429 which have proven to be fantastic medevac machines and have excellent support chains. Instead of cutting down on bases, they could have increased the number, giving better response times and most likely costing less in the long run. The 139's are just getting going now so we'll have to wait and see how it goes. I'm a skeptic and since I live in ON a pay the ridiculous taxes I would like to see value for my money.

Regardless of the above rant, I too am glad noone was injured and we have all learned a very valuable lesson.

Cheers

[ArcticKat]

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/loca ... lumbiaHome

the Mainstream News finally uncovers the story following the TSB investigation.

[sky's the limit]

#1 rule in confined areas: reduce manouvering to an absolute minum. #2 rule in confined areas: if you have to maneuver NEVER pedal turn around the mast, and definitely never put the ONLY know obstacle behind you. Very poor airmanship on display there, and as somebody said above, that will make a great training video.

Stl

[Bede]

STL,

I don't fly helicopters. Could you explain why the things you listed are not acceptable?

[r22captain]

STL feel free to add to this with your views.

#1 reduce manoeuvring
the less you move around, the less likely you are to hit anything. Ideally you approach directly to the spot you can land and T/O from. Sometimes....as is the case here by the looks of it Approach/TO was a slightly different area, then hovering to landing spot is required.

#2 Never pedal turn around mast
if you watch the video, the helicopter turns around an axis going through the rotor mast. nose goes left, tail goes right, mast stays put.

problem here is you're swinging your tail, which is 45 feet behind you, to somewhere that you can't see now. he/she couldn't see they were under the wires.
If you were to turn around an axis based at the tail (turn around the tail) then you know that your tail is in the spot you started (a safe area) and you can look to where you are going to place the body/rotor of the helicopter.

not a great image....but you'd leave the tail where it is and move the nose around in a big circle.

This is a useful manoeuvre from an operational standpoint (Fig 16-2) and you will find that it is often used when required to re-position the helicopter within a confined area. The techniques are similar to those, which you employed in sideways hovering (See figure 16-1).

To commence this manoeuvre, look first in the direction that you intend to turn, ensuring that the area is clear of obstacles that could pose a hazard to the helicopter. While doing this, try to imagine that the cockpit of your helicopter is sitting astride the circumference of a circle with the tail of the helicopter at the centre of that circle. Unlike a turn around the mast, where in still wind the turn can be completed with pedal alone, you must now co-ordinate both the pedals and the cyclic to move the helicopter around the imaginary circle. Use the pedals to keep the tail over the centre while maintaining a slow walking pace laterally with the cyclic. Collective is used to maintain the normal hover

[180]

I don't think drift or poor airmanship had anything to do with it.

This one will get blamed squarely on distraction, pure and simple. For whatever reason, BOTH pilots forgot about those power lines, (for whatever reason?) because there's no way in hell they would have spun the tail around underneath those lines and then began to climb if they had been paying attention and looking out the windshield. (Hot firefighter or EMT chick out the windshield? Confusion on the radio? Goofy indication on a dial? Personal issue? Something...)

Do those machines have CVR's? If they do, I'll bet there was something, or a couple of things going on in there that took both pilots concentration away from doing the basics like looking outside...

Oooops.

[Captain Slog]

That is the stupidest confined area error imaginable. This stuff is entry level training, the pilot and co-pilot should be grounded and sent back to flight school.

[sky's the limit]

I don't think drift or poor airmanship had anything to do with it.

This had everything to do with poor airmanship. Forgetting is not an option, and I would call getting "distracted" very poor airmanship indeed. When the's last time you worked in a wire environment? As wires go, this is a pretty basic situation, it gets exponentially worse when you're building the damn things, believe me.

R22 Capt's post is excellent, and I hope any low-timer reading this pays close attention. There are very serious do's and don'ts in confined area work, and just because a person may or may not be distracted, there is absolutely no reason to make this mistake. Capt Slog is correct, this is basic stuff.

stl

[180]

Airmanship From Wikipedia

Airmanship is skill and knowledge applied to aerial navigation, similar to seamanship in maritime navigation. Airmanship covers a broad range of desirable behaviors and abilities in an aviator. It is not simply a measure of skill or technique, but also a measure of a pilot’s awareness of the aircraft, the environment in which it operates, and of his own capabilities.[1]

The three fundamental principles of expert airmanship are skill, proficiency, and the discipline to apply them in a safe and efficient manner


You're right STL, you're right.

(Love your photography skills, by the way...)

[sky's the limit]

Airmanship From Wikipedia

Airmanship is skill and knowledge applied to aerial navigation, similar to seamanship in maritime navigation. Airmanship covers a broad range of desirable behaviors and abilities in an aviator. It is not simply a measure of skill or technique, but also a measure of a pilot’s awareness of the aircraft, the environment in which it operates, and of his own capabilities.[1]

The three fundamental principles of expert airmanship are skill, proficiency, and the discipline to apply them in a safe and efficient manner


You're right STL, you're right.

(Love your photography skills, by the way...)

Finally!!!! WooHoo! I've been waiting for this moment on Avcan for centuries it seems! Lol

stl

PS (Could email my wife that first bit? I'm not sure she knows how to put those particular words together... And my Mom while you're at it...?

[180]

Ya ya, get over it...

So do those machines have CVR's?