Clutha helicopter crash: "... all relevant risks have been identified..."

[Adrian]

Did it really say "-25"...?

[The Natural Philosopher]

yup!

[charles]

Agreed not normally fatal these day, but usually result in incapacity for a few minutes.

[charles]

I doubt if your BMW moves significantly in a vertical direction

[Dave Plowman (News)]

What you'd expect with Jaguar.

[Sam Plusnet]

In some terrain it's compulsory.

[Nightjar]

To avoid any confusion over what I meant I will, if you prefer, rephrase that to 'if both supply tanks were full, which, at the time of the incident, they should have been from the amount of fuel drained from the aircraft'.

Essentially, you are suggesting that a relatively minor fault that has been detected in only one known aircraft of this type existed in this one and that it lead to a complex series of events that ended up with the aircraft crashing.

I prefer the theory that the crash was the result of a single catastrophic event that gave the pilot no time to do anything. We will find out when the AAIB report eventually gets published.

Colin Bignell

[GB]

I've got a Volvo. I would not dare to run it out of fuel. I'd expect a school-masterly Swedish voice to give me a lecture on why that's a really bad idea, if I did.

[Terry Fields]

Last night I was at a small gathering in a room with a TV, which at one point showed the local BBCTV news for the South West. I'm fairly sure I heard the presenter say that Devon air ambulance (there was a film clip of an EC-135 showing) had now resumed operations after a fault had been found with a fuel gauge.

I've searched iPayer and done a google, but can't find this story repeated anywhere.

If this is in fact true, it coud mean that two different fuel-indicator related faults have been found on these aircraft, leading to the possibility - not strong, I admit - that the Clutha crash was caused by fuel starvation resulting from false indications of available fuel.

[Dave Liquorice]

The same fuel level indicator fault that was reported last Thursday that triggered the Bond Air Services precautionary grounding. No new fault, just that it's taken a while to get these ones checked out.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Are you saying a helicopter does enough to make a difference to a fuel reading? Banking etc would be more of a problem. But at least partially solved by using a pair of floats and averaging them.

[Terry Fields]

Ah, thanks for that. I'm sure the presenter said 'fuel gauge', but that could be journalistic licence, or I've got cloth ears.

[Terry Fields]

There was some discussion of this in the pprune thread.

Apparently, given fuel levels and aircraft attitude and speed, the 'low fuel' light can come on in normal operations even if there is plenty of fuel, and the pilot has to switch on the transfer pumps to move fuel from the main tank to the supply tanks. It's apparently documented in the flight manual and is fairly routine.

[Dave Liquorice]

Except that an aircraft when banking to turn "down" is still pretty much still straight along top/bottom alignment of the aircraft(*). "Down" is not always the vertical (relative to the ground) up/down that gravity creates. A fixed wing craft can fly with one wing down in straight and level flight but I'm not sure a helicopter can given that it's effectively just hanging below the rotor. Nose up/down yes but that would imply climb descent or accelaration/deccelaration, not nrmal straight and level flight.

Army Air Corps Lynx, we dropped into Southhampton to refuel. Did some notional flight along the runway to take off but that wasn't the direction we wanted to go. Pilot made a sharp turn, I remember looking out of the open side door at the grass below us. Our "down" was most definately still straight through the bottom of the aircraft not through the door.

[John Williamson]

^^^^^^^^^ ignorance

The journo who wrote the piece has probably never driven a car with a low fuel warning light.

[Nightjar]

The aircraft is designed so that one engine has a slightly larger supply tank than the other so, even if one engine runs out of fuel, the other still has a few minutes of flying time. Your scenario would also require that the pilot didn't realise that, after more than an hour and a half of flying, the fuel gauge should not still be showing full, which AIUI was the fault found. It would also require that a highly experienced pilot failed to deal properly with one of the standard emergencies.

Colin Bignell

[Harry Bloomfield]

Dave Plowman (News) was thinking very hard :

My car, for example, has two float level sensors, one for each side of the tank and measures consumed fuel by computing fuel pressure against injector opening.

[The Other Mike]

Regular checks didn't stop a mate of mine having a heart attack 10 mins before getting into the front right hand seat of a 737. Mind you, having been a piss head off duty in the RAF for a couple of decades, and a lover of all you can eat breakfasts can't have helped much.

[Nightjar]

That is why I said most heart problems. There have been calls in the past for more stringent tests. OTOH, more than one person owes their life to having a flying medical. One that I have seen reported was rushed to hospital in an emergency ambulance when the medical examiner saw the results of the ECG.

Colin Bignell

[Tim Lamb]

In message , The Other Mike writes

Likewise my wife's uncle in law. Retired RAF winco, training pilots in Jordan. Flew back here for a holiday, collapsed and died within 24 hours of getting off the aircraft.

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