Citing lapses in training, maintenance and the lack of a safety culture, the FAA has rejected the Collings Foundation’s permission to carry passengers on revenue flights in its 10 vintage aircraft. The decision was prompted by the FAA’s investigation into the crash of the foundation’s B-17G Nine-O-Nine at Windsor Locks, Connecticut, on Oct. 2, 2019, that destroyed the aircraft and killed five passengers and two crew members. Six occupants survived, some with serious injuries.
Special VFR? That implies that the pilot or the aircraft may not have been equipped for IFR flight, and the conditions were reportedly IMC along the coast. Seems like they were basically scud running, which is risky in any kind of aircraft.
Sounds like a classic case of get-there-itis. It’s really sad.
If the reported weather is less, a pilot can request a Special VFR Clearance. Several conditions must be met; the visibility must be at least one statue mile, the pilot must remain clear of clouds and at night, the pilot must be instrument rated in an IFR capable aircraft.
Low altitude urban flying in poor visibility is tricky at best.
Even a minor distraction or mechanical issue can instantly be deadly.
But we all know this.
This model helicopter is capable of IFR. But, IFR also requires being at minimum instrument altitude and on a route ATC can approve in the very busy airspace along the route of this ill-fated flight.
Unless rules have changed since my ATC time, SVFR can only be approved in Surface Areas of class B,C,D airspace. Without pulling up a LAX sectional, I don’t think the class B surface area covers very much territory. Sounds like they were coming up from the southeast of LAX and needed clearance through that LAX surface airspace to get up to the NW. The L.A. area has huge numbers of helicopters operating all around there constantly and have various procedures established for them. I’m guessing a pilot of an L.A. area S76 would have been very familiar with all of that and used the process frequently. So, the SVFR part was probably not an issue. The terrain does have big hills past LAX. So back to the scud running, which helicopters actually are permitted to do more so than fix wing or maybe a mechanical thing. Frank Tallman, as experienced and as familiar with the L.A. area as he was, scud running hit the hills out there and got killed.
I know about where this happened from a road sign and a witnesses comment in Raf’s video. Las Virgenes Rd and Mureau Rd is in an area of a lot of canyons both north and south of the 101 Freeway located WSW of Van Nuys. Even in the video, you can see raw hills. This is 15 mi east of the ultimate destination in Thousand Oaks. He had no business being down that low in that location I’m betting he was looking to find the 101 Freeway? The Flight Aware ground track ends just about where the crash occurred, too.
According to the adult witness, the machine was producing power, was flying very low and very slow and now going eastbound … indicating the pilot was scud running and looking for something ?? But he was 15 miles east from his destination ?? Why was he so low there ??
The witness in the video says he’d lived in the area a long time and never seen such low clouds and scud.
What happened to Climb Communicate Confess and Comply? If the pilot had just Climbed, he’da been in VFR conditions albeit maybe “on top” So what? Didn’t we all just talk about FAR 91.3 in the fuel dumping incident. I’m wondering what sort of nav equipment or glass screens the helicopter had? Surely he’d have known he was in those hills … which are very uninhabited. Hell, my Aera 660 portable will tell me … “Terrain Terrain.”
It appears they were headed to his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks about 15 mi west of the crash scene. If nothing else, the pilot could have climbed and headed to the Camarillo airport which is about 10 mi west of their destination. They could have gotten ground transport from there.
They’re touting the pilot as a “qualified” 8,200hr CFI instrument rated pilot and the S-76 surely had some good nav gear aboard … what the heck was that guy doing down in the soup around 1100’? Lots of questions here. And … flying single pilot in such conditions wasn’t very smart, either. Even if he had a private pilot aboard to help him navigate, it woulda probably gone better.
There’s gonna be a lot to be learned from this CFIT evolution.
Looking at the VFR chart for that area, minimum safe altitude was 5,200’ The Ventura VOR could have been used to navigate either to Camarillo or Oxnard or NAS Point Mugu to get his ‘bearings’ and find the 101 Freeway. I’m seeing peaks in the area around where he went down of almost 3,000’. I’m betting that – on top of everything else – he was under verbal pressure inside the aircraft to get to the destination, as well.
It’s possible the SAS and/or autopilot wasn’t functioning, in which case it could have been nearly impossible to maintain stability and control without outside references. Helicopters are not airplanes, so it’s possible it wasn’t as simple as “climb above the fog/cloud layer”. We won’t know if that’s the case until we get more information from the investigation, but it is certainly something to consider. It still doesn’t remove “pilot error” (i.e. a poor decision to fly at all in that weather) from the possible cause, though.
My purely speculative guess as to why they were flying low-level VFR is that either: the required equipment for single-pilot IFR wasn’t available on-board (either not installed, or not working), OR it was available but the pilot wanted to avoid possible delays on an IFR clearance combined with the fact that they still would have had to go visual to land off-airport. And helicopter VFR limits are much lower than for aircraft (presumably because a helicopter can just slow down and is more maneuverable than an airplane).
An S-76 can’t be “controlled” just by reference to horizon and heading instruments? I highly doubt that. Once in translational lift, a helicopter IS an airplane. I might buy into that in a hover but not in cruise. As I said above, find the Ventura VOR and/or Camarillo airport and THEN decide if you want to descend into the soup or tell the tower you want to make a precautionary landing. And I’d additionally wonder why the Lat/Long of the destination wasn’t dialed into a GPS, too. This is nothing more than pilot error resulting in CFIT.
I can’t speak to the S-76 specifically, but certainly the Robinson helicopters aren’t as easy to control by instruments as with an airplane. It’s certainly possible (they are used as instrument helicopter trainers), but that pretty much requires two people (and even then, they aren’t approved for flight in IMC). I don’t disagree with the alternative you mention, but again, it could be that the required equipment for single-pilot operations wasn’t available. The radar rate of descent in the final moments does seem consistent with helicopter loss-of-control (i.e. potential rotor stall).
This accident is starting to look more and more like the Gulfstream accident in Aspen. In both cases experienced flight crew flying into weather situations that they should have known better then to fly in. Without being disrespectful of the deceased, I wonder what kind of owner Mr Bryant was to fly for? Was there “pressure” to fly into weather that the pilot should have known better than to attempt? RIP