Flew together with a bunch of V-22 Ospray yesterday. They have a base on ENVA during a NATO exercise. Cool aircraft, and certainly twin engine. Don’t know if it can hover with one engine, but I think the engines/props are linked with a shaft.
I know next to nothing about helicopters… but this one reportedly came “spinning down” which to me sounds like a loss of tail rotor effectiveness….perhaps that happens with the loss of one engine…I don’t know…but my (uneducated) thoughts were that there was a failure of the tail rotor drive system…perhaps gearbox…apparently crunching noises were heard….but it does seem that unlike fixed wing aircraft, there are a lot more potential single-point failure mechanisms, even with twin engines.
I don’t understand why this debate has fallen so quickly into an (apparently very ill informed) comparison between fixed and rotary wing.
I can’t think of a single MEP that could have performed that takeoff without coming to grief, even without a mechanical failure.
Each type of aircraft can do things the other can’t, which is why they are both so successful.
Agreed. The only analogy is that an AW169 meets similar certification criteria to public transport fixed wing aircraft (ie stuff like A320s/737s etc). In other words, if you follow the prescribed profiles and have an engine failure you still have the ability to safely reject the departure or continue with a takeoff.
Everything else is very specific to type.
I think is inappropriate to comment on any accident, particularly before publication of the findings of the official investigation.
In a wider context, LTE is an emergency for which we are trained and which most owner-pilots practice as often as we can – say at least once a week. Whether the same is true of non owners, I don’t know – perhaps a commercial pilot will say.
Perhaps like passenger jets, these $6m+ choppers are so safe, with so many redundant systems, that it is considered to be sufficient to practice emergencies every now and then in a simulator.
Jacko wrote:
I think is inappropriate to comment on any accident, particularly before publication of the findings of the official investigation.
Maybe I’m missing something but I haven’t seen any comment on accident; the discussion is about the performance.
Emir wrote:
I haven’t seen any comment on accident
AnthonyQ wrote:
this one reportedly came “spinning down” which to me sounds like a loss of tail rotor effectiveness….perhaps that happens with the loss of one engine…I don’t know…but my (uneducated) thoughts were that there was a failure of the tail rotor drive system…perhaps gearbox…apparently crunching noises were heard
Please let’s not have that discussion yet again about not discussing accidents.
Most accident reports come out a year and sometimes several years after it happened, by which time most people have forgotten all about it and only dedicated forum readers will bump into the report.
And a lot of the reports (notably some of those from some countries) are so bland that they are of almost no value for learning anything. And the highly politically charged ones (like this one, or the Shoreham Hunter one) get investigated thoroughly and the report takes ages to come out.
Discussion is a good thing.
Dave_Phillips wrote:
Everything else is very specific to type.
That says it best about helicopters, and yes, there is little comparison to fixed wing aircraft in terms of what happens after something goes bang or quiet. My multi engined helicopter flying is limited to the AS355, and the single engined training we did was limited, with many cautions about what not to expect. The helicopter systems are designed to maximize control and performance with an engine failed, but that does not always assure full capability on one engine.
I recall watching a demonstrator S76 at the 1984 NBAA show takeoff. The takeoff appeared underwhelming, and cautious, though successful, as the announcer told us it had been done on one engine only.
To comment on the accident, though the outcome was obviously sad, it appears that the pilots did a great job in getting the helicopter onto the ground in a place, preplanned, I imagine, which was no risk to everyone on the ground. Well done that! It is very unlikely that crashing a fixed wing aircraft there could have been done in that area with so little effect on everyone else.
Well, if we are going to discuss it, I would have thought that an obstacle strike would be a more parsimonious explanation than a gearbox or engine failure. I don’t think that I have been to a football stadium since I was about eight, but don’t they famously have quite a lot of light towers and aerials all around them?
This particular one seems to have obstacles in every direction:
