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ABC News says 6 fatal, Pilot, two adults and Two children. Passengers from Spain. Video shows helo falling almost vertical, tumbling end over end with no rotor.
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ABC News says 6 fatal, Pilot, two adults and Two children. Passengers from Spain. Video shows helo falling almost vertical, tumbling end over end with no rotor.
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Correction: Three children.
Admittedly a stodgy point of view, the unwary public would be well advised to regard rotor wing aircraft as an important tool relevant to utility applications only, not to be used for tourism and entertainment.
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Yes but fixed wing are not nearly as much fun.
What happened appears to be the worst nightmare of a helicopter pilot except in my nightmare I’m at 3000 ft with a lot more time to think about the fall. A comparable airplane malfunction would be loss of both elevators and wings. As a fix wing and rotor wing pilot of 30 years I’ve had both nightmares. The question is, did the tail rotor and part of the the tail boom come off striking the main rotor snapping the mast or did the mast snap and the main rotor strike and sever off the tail boom. How would either happen? A lost of a pitch change link on either rotor would do it. A mast bump maybe but much less likely, I don’t think it’s a particularly bad problem in the Long Ranger. Could have been as simple as a passenger smacking the controls and over reaction of the pilot. Was simply amazing to see the rotor spinning like a pin wheel to earth, a sight I wish I might have seen without the loss of life involved.
In one video still it appears to show the complete rotor blade assembly, including the mast and transmission(?), falling separately into the river.
How does that even happen?
This link is time-stamped to start at the 5:06 mark. Pause the video and look at the rotor assembly in the upper-left of the frame.
Graphic video shows the moment helicopter plunges into the Hudson River
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One rotor failure mode is a (survivable) engine failure followed by a botched auto-rotation.
Pretty much all teetering rotor systems are susceptible to mast bumping. Some are just more prone to it than others. Whether that happened here or not, I’ll leave that up to the investigators.
True, but mast bumping rarely leaves the blades, head, mast, and transmission intact. Something happened that catastrophically ripped the entire drive train out of the airframe. Assuming that they recover all the components, I’m fairly confident they will be able to determine the proximal cause.
As a chopper builder and pilot, I am acutely aware of all the fiddley-bits in the drive and controls on my craft, not a single one of which is non-critical.
I’m based at a small GA airport in Colorado. During fire season the ramp can be pretty crowded with fire fighting helicopters. Last year several of the helos were grounded for a short time after a fatal accident in Canada. Guys on several of the crews were definitely shaken up over the incident. Am assuming they either knew and/or were friends of the pilot who died.
An Airwolf Tension-Torsion strap had failed resulting in a blade separation on a Bell 212. Bell 206’s were part of the resulting inspection campaign. A 206B inspection found a TT strap in the process of failing.
I’m just a fixed wing guy with not much knowledge about rotary wing stuff. Just that there are a lot of critical pieces of hardware in a helicopter that have to work 100%, 100% of the time. Very sad that a young family and the pilot were lost.
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All I’ve seen so far shows main rotor blades above fuselage but tail boom missing.
Look at the photo on AP for example.
Can’t see full length of main rotor blades especially on two-blade Bell 206 series unless they are perpendicular to viewer.
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A few years a 212 or similar helo had a defective rotor part fail, in central AB.
Defective out of the factory - wasn’t heat treated, tragic irony is that it was installed because present one was either time-ex or for poor condition. Another defective new one was found on another helicopter or in spares, there.
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Yep, the incident back in 21" was a pin failure. It sheared and a main rotor blade departed. The guys and gals that crew the fire fighting helos I mentioned earlier have a tough and very dangerous job.
If you look closely at the still images from the video(s), you will see that the main rotor is detached and is one of the several objects descending along with the tail boom.
I can’t even imagine the terror the occupants were experiencing as the fuselage was falling towards the river. Hope I die in my sleep.
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I am amazed by the amount of conjecture when the video clearly shows 3 objects splashing into the river. To me it looks like the fuselage first followed by two other items which would be a rotor blade and the tail section. Quite amazing how something so simple can have so many opinions?
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Thanks.
Some witnesses said they saw a rotor falling, some people seem to assume main rotor but it appears still on top of fuselage - so tail rotor is what was seen falling.
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That’s not what your video shows.
This video shows the rotor blade assembly, still spinning, as it falls into the water. This link starts at the point showing the spinning assembly:
But operator of helicopter says main rotor blades were not on helicopter as it was falling. Perhaps he was misunderstood or just confused in the stress of the situation.
(Some people say you can see main rotor detached and falling with fuselage, but I point out that main rotor sits well above fuselage on slender pieces.)
Huh?
The still photo of it falling, such as on AP, shows it upright.
You are speaking of the wreckage in the water
!
Still too much hasty looking and bleeping by people not familiar with the model of helicopter - and not thinking.
The photo that accompanies this article shows the fuselage upside down. The landing skids are clearly visible above the cabin. It also shows the rotor blades and transmission separated from the helicopter. They are circled in red.