… When he enters IMC I hear myself saying … “TURN AROUND YOU FOOL!!” So unnecessary.
It’s a document that’s hard to take, especially when you see how the passengers slowly start to recognize the danger twds the end. At one point I had the feeling that the male passenger made a “turn around” gesture and that he was aware of the danger
RIP …
I know nothing much about helis, apart from 40 mins in a Jet Ranger.
Can an R44 be certified for IFR flight? The panel looks very basic, so I’m sure that’s not the case here, even if it can be.
Looking at the map at the start of the view, this looks like a “transport to destination” type of flight rather than a trivial “spectatular arrival” type of flight. In other words it looks like there was a fair distance to be flown, and not just from the local airport to the venue.
The the public, they probably don’t realise that VFR flight isn’t reliable for “transport to destination” type of flights. Of course the pilot felt under a lot of pressure. I wonder was this a commerical flight or a friend doing a favour?
Very sad.
Peter wrote:
What you absolutely cannot do, by hand, is hover (i.e. land) in IMC.
He actually seems to be attempting just that. Look at 2:57, the sound changes (I spend enough time in these things to recognize the hover sound…..) and if you look closely, the trees in the bg don’t move. Then it all goes to hell.
Very few single engine helis have ever been IFR certified. There was a Jet Ranger in the UK, and a few turbines in the USA. The Shoreham guy who flew an MD500 around the world bought one of the latter, for that flight. He’s still got it there, painted bright orange.
This pilot has epaulettes and, apart from taking the mickey as people do in light GA, this looks like a charter flight with a commercial pilot, so the expectation of passenger safety would not have been quite as portrayed for normal SEP GA. But even commercial pilots screw up…
Apparently it is possible to hover in IMC, if you know how to do it (I was told there is a significant off-level attitude on the AI, with something like a 7 degree roll to one side) but you inevitably end up moving sideways and will eventually hit something.
If I remember correctly some R22s and R44s are used for IFR training by schools in the USA, but they are not approved for flight in IMC. Many have paid trying it with their lives, these machines are simply too unstable. There is also no autopilot for the R44, they are only made for some professional types and cost a fortune.
I know some people who have R44s, none of them would try to hover in IMC. I think it is impossible with the R44s standard instruments.
Alexis wrote:
If I remember correctly some R22s and R44s are used for IFR training by schools in the USA, …
Certainly not in Europe. I have trained several helicopter pilots for their instrument rating. There is no affordable IFR capable and approved training helicopter. Therefore most of them get their instrument rating in fixed wing aircraft and do a minimum number of hours in an IFR approved helicopter (15 hours IIRC) thereafter. Agusta 109 or similar at 3000 Euros an hour or so.
No, the USA are not in Europe ;-)
dublinpilot wrote:
Can an R44 be certified for IFR flight?
I am not a heli pilot as well but seen this somewhere else earlier today: Robinson R44 which is not rated for IFR/IMC conditions. This is mainly due to the fact that there is no autopilot/stability augmentation system on board that would allow a pilot to maintain stability without visual references outside the cockpit.
The EASA PPL(H) requires 5 hours of instrument flight time and, having done the training, I know that I’m in no mood to ever do it for real.
Most helicopter pilots who undertake an IR combine it with a twin turbine rating (AS 355, A109, H135 etc) as the only sensible people who fly in IMC tend to be the oil rig bunch and really high-end AOC charter – twin turbine being a regulatory requirement. The other thing is that most helicopters, including those I listed above, have minimal/no ice protection.
R44 boy in Brazil? That’s manslaughter.
According to talk on another site, the pilot of this incident was actually instrument rated in helicopters (although the R44 isn’t instrument certified).
It seems to me that the helicopter’s great slow flying ability (and lower VFR minima because of that) can sometimes end up leading pilots towards a very seductive trap, especially if the destination is that close. In fact, the “destination is near” get-there-itis trap seems particularly magnetic. You’ve been flying for maybe an hour, and your destination is only 5 flying minutes away, but there’s a wall of cloud. I’ve lost count of how many accident reports I’ve read where the weather was fine for the first 290 miles of a 300 mile journey, and the CFIT or loss of control happened less than 5 minutes flying time from the intended destination.
There’s been at least a couple of helis that have come to grief related to the TT races here, one was quite a famous rider who did a CFIT into the Pennines in an R44 if I remember correctly, and one here a couple of years ago where a JetRanger pilot was flying low and slow close to the hills in extremely windy conditions with serious low level turbulence, and his main rotor actually collided with the nose of the helicopter (and “mast bumping” sounds so innocuous).
