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tl;dr : The pilot took off into bad weather. Despite his client insisting on several occasions that the weather was too poor and that the pilot should not pick him up, he proceeded anyway.
As you say it's an interim report but it looks like pilot error.
Well, I think it was perfectly reasonable for him to take off and go and check out the weather at his intended destination. The chain of events that came to unfold, however, raises all sorts of issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
I hadn't realised that he had flown to Elstree and found he couldn't land. It looks as if he chose to land at Battersea so he would be closer to Elstree when he resumed his flight after the weather had lifted.
Interesting reading the AAIB account. First thing you realise from reading it, is that the pilot was very busy in the minutes before the accident. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate, in that order. Operating single crew, in marginal weather in a complex airspace environment is no doubt meat and drink to an ATPL qualified pilot, but any one aspect of this could go a little awry, and there isn't going to be much room for error.
Prescient to the accident, the meteorology reports detail that the dewpoint is the same as the air temperature, so any lowering of the air temperature would produce a significant deterioration in horizontal and vertical visibility.
The pilot stated that he was OK with SVFR clearance, and able to fly in visual meteorological conditions 'on top' of the cloud, but cleared not higher than 1000ft QFE (with the altimeter pressure setting giving the height above mean sea level). It would be easy to lose or gain a couple of hundred feet while having to cope with everything going on.
I would surmise that the pilot found himself in deteriorating conditions, and for reasons known to himself declined an IFR clearance, and decided to divert to Battersea as he probably had a hole in the cloud through which he could see Vauxhaull. He found himself low trying to maintain visual contact with the ground, and blundered into the crane which he couldn't see.
As usual, and accident occurred because of a long chain of cumulative events, and poor decision making, if any of these had gone differently, then a tradgedy would have been averted.
Now it have happened again.
Two Berlin Police helicopters crash during an exercise:
BBC News - Double helicopter crash in BerlinQuote:
Two helicopters have crashed near Berlin's Olympic Stadium, leaving several people dead or injured. The helicopters hit each other in
mid-air during a police exercise. The Bild newspaper said one of the pilots was killed and four people were injured, two of them seriously.
Hubschrauber-Absturz Berlin: Pilot Tot! Polizei-Hubschrauber über Olympiastadion abgestürzt - Berlin - Bild.de
Well, not exactly. There's been another helicopter accident, yes, but one in completely different circumstances.Quote:
Originally Posted by BleAivano
As I understand it from talking to a guy from Cornwall who operate a fleet of hire Helicopters, 99% of all Helicopter accidents are due to pilot error .
*sigh*Quote:
Originally Posted by driveace
What about the fact that helicopters tend to operate in closer proximity to things they can hit than fixed wing aircraft? Perhaps there's also the fact that helicopters don't glide quite as nicely as fixed wing aircraft. I suspect the accident rate of fixed wing aircraft trying to land on a pitching deck of something that's not an aircraft carrier would be somewhat higher than that of helicopters doing the same thing.
With all due respect, it's sometimes best to educate yourself rather than "understanding" something because someone told you. That said, my aviation lecturer at university did tell me that helicopters only fly because they're so ugly that the earth repels them. Just googled him and seems he was in the news a year and a bit ago! -> 'Next moment I was on the ceiling, then the floor' - The West Australian http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-...flight-plunge/ Thoroughly reasonable and likeable guy was Malcolm, I almost feel bad for falling asleep in his lectures a couple of times now!
It would be equally valid to say that 99% of fatal accidents are attributed to pilot error. As I understand it, this is simply a way for an owner/air traffic controller/maintenance engineer/etc to avoid admitting an error as a dead man can't defend himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by driveace
Not really. That's a bit unfair on accident investigators, who do a very good job in often difficult circumstances. If an official accident report by a recognised authority says it's down to pilot error, that's good enough for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by D-Type