Inquiry: McRae Flying Too Low And Too Fast

[themo]

Former rally world champion Colin McRae MBE crashed his helicopter because he was flying too low and too fast in the wrong place, a Fatal Accident Inquiry has found.The inquiry found 39-year-old McRae had undertaken the flight that killed him and three others without a valid pilot’s licence.

McRae crashed his helicopter on 15 September 2007 in a wooded area, Mouse Valley, near to his home in Lanark. He died along with his son Johnny, aged five, and two family friends: six year-old Ben Porcelli and Graeme Duncan, who was 37.

The FAI has found that McRae lost control of his helicopter after entering Mouse Valley when there were no “operational or logistical reasons” to do so.

The helicopter deviated from its path and collided with trees. McRae wasn’t able to recover control of the aircraft because he was flying too fast and too low.

Sheriff Nikola Stewart concluded:“For a private pilot such as Mr McRae, lacking the necessary training, experience or requirement to do so, embarking upon such demanding, low level flying in such difficult terrain, was imprudent, unreasonable and contrary to the principles of good airmanship.”

The FAI found that McRae, the youngest man ever to win the World Rally Championships drivers title with his victory for the Subaru team in 1995, didn’t hold a valid flying licence at the time of the crash and therefore should not have been flying the aircraft.

Video recordings of the flight had been taken by passenger Graeme Duncan on a video camera he used inside the helicopter.

The footage demonstrated that McRae had consistently flown the aircraft at unnecessarily low heights throughout the fatal flight.

[Jake Stephens]

God love his family who have to read this.

[Juha_Koo]

Even though I respect Colin's achievements on rally stages, as an aviation enthusiast I can't tell how saddened and disappointed I am to read this. The accident was totally avoidable and only happened because of pilot's very bad judgement and reckless flying.

[N.O.T]

all rescpect is lost...

[GigiGalliNo1]

It sucks to hear this ...

[GigiGalliNo1]

But it's not like he purposely did this!!

[Bazza2541]

Nothing like leaving the dead to rest in peace.
As far as it goes, nobody can really know what happened. Much less a 'jobsworth expert' paid to find fault.

[janvanvurpa]

I said this at the time from reports all round.
And to put it very mildly was shat upon.
I tried to couch what I said it reasonable terms, stressed that the military, with basically unlimited funds ---since the mony comes from taxpayers---train and train and train and train their pilots---and still they frequently crash their helicopters...

McRae had driven well, but there was a huge amount of contemptuousness for those around him lurking not very far below the surface which we saw flare up---tooo frequently in my book considering how little time TV crews shoot "talking head shots". And I said and repeat--it is one thing to drive like you want in a car with one person who is fully cognizant of the dangers---and in a car with a carefully designed and built cage.
And we saw that at times he clearly didn't care if the car was destroied.

It is quite another to be do aerobatics and playing the fool in quote "deteriorating weather conditions" in a helicopter you have as a toy, jerking the thing around just to scare a couple of boys and a neighbor----and not have enough sense of responsibility to not kill them all.

So as a driver...GOOD.

As a human----bad.

[N.O.T]

As a human----bad.

thats a very mild expression...it good to forget people like him as fast as possible.

[Juha_Koo]

Nothing like leaving the dead to rest in peace.
As far as it goes, nobody can really know what happened. Much less a 'jobsworth expert' paid to find fault.

I'm sure the accident investigators know what happened, especially with the video evidence they had. Great mysteries have been solved only using voice and data recordings. Now they even had a video and the wreckage and impact damage was visible, and not for example in deep sea. Accident investigators are not the police nor the tribunal. They never search guilty ones - they search reasons why something happened. It could have been mechanical failure. In this case it was pilot error.