OT Clutha pub helicopter crash: engine failure

[tony sayer]

Which seems to me to indicate more then ever to pilot incapacitation..

Or something really overloaded his capabilities

[Windmill]

Unfortunately exactly that is a possibility though not a probability. Which is why one sees mention sometimes of facts such as (for example): "the pilot was recently divorced".

Or anything else which disastrously 'messes with your head', as modern parlance has it.

Being highly experienced does not preclude being wrong sometimes.

[Tim+]

It's a very odd physical incapacitation that lasts long enough to ignore warning lights and two sequential engine failures before crashing.

The PM didn't reveal anything physical. Of course there may have been some sort of mental/psychological/cognitive incapacitation/impairment.

My, that's a lot of strokes. ;-)

Tim

[Windmill]

Some time back there was a claim that there were 96 litres of fuel unused. Being a cynic, I wondered if someone said '9 point 6', and someone with a position to defend wanted to hear that as 'ninety-six'.

The quantity seems now to have been translated into kilograms.

[Windmill]

That or something like it is usuallly described as 'the argument from authority'.

It is unthinkable that someone with one hundred years of experience (fill in a number) could make a mistake, therefore it didn't happen.

Then again, the pilot isn't here to rebut any claims about error. Which is sometimes convenient, especially if there are doubts about maintenance or reliability.

Does anyone remember that RAF Chinook which flew into a hill (on Mull, was it?) with a load of upper-echelon spooks aboard?

[charles]

or a serious coughing fit

[Martin Brown]

Why not? It wouldn't have taken all that much of a distraction if the system despite having dual engines is as fail dangerous as the latest report seems to imply. It is an absolute disgrace that the chopper was not at the very least equipped with a flight voice recorder (or better still a full black box). There would have been no ambiguity then.

Another very odd thing is WTF did the police observers not use their independent radio channel to call mayday if the pilot was incapacitated?

These things are flying around over major cities making a nuisance of themselves with monotonous regularity. If you can't trust them not to spontaneously fall out of the sky then they should be grounded until the police can demonstrate that they are safe to fly over densely populated areas. This is potentially a serious safety issue.

Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde to lose one engine may be regarded as a misfortune; but to lose both looks like carelessness.

Ockhams razor suggests a serious pilot error occurred here.

[Nightjar]

...

I would be interested to know how you think they could have recovered from shutting down the wrong engine. You may notice that they tried but were unable to achieve an air restart, probably due to the lack of bleed pressure from the faulty engine.

The point I am making is that errors required are quite independent and not part of a chain. Getting any one of them right would have either prevented a crash or have permitted the aircraft to land safely.

Colin Bignell

[Johny B Good]

I remember reading endless articles about the raw deal the MoD were giving the Pilot(s) in trying to 'sweep' serious issues with the FADEC used on the Chinook 'Under The Carpet' in one of the weekly IT rags I used to get for free.

I decided to cancel the rag once their highly amusing cartoon page with its ongoing comedy soap opera about a mythical Council IT department somwhere in "Basingstoke, Science Wonder City of The South!" was discontinued - for the life of me I can't recall the name of the publication (pretty certain it wasn't CTW though), nor can I find my collection of clipped out pages to jog my memory.

The one commonality between the chinook crash and this event that stands out is the reference to FADEC (engine control). Whether, after all this time, there remain any issues or not, I don't know.

I would hope the answer would be 'Not' but vested interests do have a habit of doing totally the 'wrong thing', especially when they believe (often with good reason) that they'll never be held truly accountable _when_ (or if) they are finally 'found out'.

[Adrian]

It was either Computing or Computer Weekly. Probably the former.

Nope, the latter.

Blimey, they were still at it as recently as 2010...

[Johny B Good]

The other way around. 76Kg equates to 92.7 litres using the density value of 0.820 kg/L for Jet A fuel at 15 deg C according to the wiki article I used to check my initial guess of 0.9kg/L

Fuel quantities for aircraft are always referenced by weight rather than by volume (which can vary with temperature) since weight is a critical flight parameter.

[Johny B Good]

Well, that's another potential suspect thrown into the mix (the FADEC). The pilot may have been distracted by an engine control problem (the FADEC units in the Eurocopter needn't have suffered the problems of the Chinook, it could simply have been a never before seen problem due to a really obscure bug or a one off glitch).

A CVR could probably have provided sufficient clues. It's a real pity (and a surpise to me, considering the helicopter's policing role) that the helicopter wasn't so equipped.

[Nightjar]

On 16/02/2014 20:43, Tim+ wrote: ....

The pilot of the Tristar that crashed at Heathrow in 1972 suffered a potentially distressing stress-related arterial event anything up to two hours before the crash. That is longer than the entire Clutha helicopter flight.

I can't find the results of the PM anywhere. Can you provide a link? I don't know what the procedures are for publishing PM results are in Scotland, but I do know there is no record of a Fatal Accident Inquiry having taken place yet.

Colin Bignell

[alan]

Around my way they seem a _very_ expensive way of dealing with petty crime. The Police web site show no serious crimes in my (surrounding) area but the Police helicopter will regularly hover in the small hours of the morning disturbing the sleep of 10,000s of residents. Roll on the funding cuts for the police!

[tony sayer]

Yes ignore them, perhaps he didn't .. but if he was having a silent cerebral infarct or transient ischemic attack event that would be sufficiently long enough of reduced mental capability in a critical situation..

I doubt that it would show up that easily on examination afterwards and that too depending on any damage the pilot would have incurred in the impact it might not have been a big one but sufficient impairment to be a possible cause..

Thats how life starts .. not ends ;)...

[tony sayer]

Would they have possibly realised the situation they were in, and in that event would they have intervened?. They would like I reckon most "members of the public", have little idea on what's going on and of what to do.

Perhaps they knew that there was a problem but would making a radio call have solved anything at all?. Would they have done like most anyone have done left it to the pilot believing him to know all of that was going on being the best person on board to have coped with the problem/s.

Even 'tho he most likely if incapacitated, could not have done so in the likely short space of the available..

Which I'm sure better qualified persons have under review all the time..

I'm very thankful to an air ambulance helicopter which got me to hospital in time for a life saving operation after a serious fall back in 2009 ;!..

[Nightjar]

On 18/02/2014 09:14, tony sayer wrote: ...

The longer we discuss the crash, the more probable that something like this seems to me.

The situation is that a pilot with over 600 hours on this type of helicopter was returning to base after a flight that was approaching its fuel endurance limit.

He really should have been watching fuel very closely and the display on the helicopter clearly shows fuel levels in the different tanks, both as a graphic display and in kgs. It also shows the expected endurance remaining and the fuel use rate for each engine.

The aircraft gave low fuel warnings for both supply tanks. The aircraft was found with the two fuel transfer pumps turned off, but the two engine priming pumps, which are usually only used for starting, turned on. That could mean that the pilot responded to the warnings by turning the wrong pumps on, which suggests that he was confused.

When the engines failed, the pilot did not make any radio call, did not engage battery backup and, critically, did not put the helicopter into auto rotation. The last should be second nature to any experienced helicopter pilot. Again, this suggests he was, at least, confused.

Overall, pilot incapacitation does seem to be more likely than pilot error.

As I have said, I can't find any published details of the post mortem. Presumably any significant results will be in the final AAIB report.

Colin Bignell

[charles]

I would have thought that pilot incapacitation resulted in pilot error.

[Martin Brown]

The free fall time from 2000 feet is about 10s you would have thought long enough to phone home even if it was just to say "Mayday". I can understand the pilot having other far more important things to think about with a double engine flame out but not the police observers.

SOP would surely have been to report the first engine flame out to ATC and request emergency permission to land.

Making a Mayday call would give the emergency services notice and would have transferred some information about what happened to the ground. As it is we are down to forensic guesswork since the helicopter appears to have been mechanically working apart from the fact it had no fuel in the tanks directly connected to the engines (but 95L in the main tank) and both its rotors had stopped by the time it hit the ground.

But it is pretty crazy that we have no record of their in flight conversations to fall back on for crash investigation. It isn't like modern digital recorders would add any significant weight to the system.

I can understand that a full black box would add weight and complexity.

The Police helicopters in Manchester and Newcastle mainly chase petty criminals around in the dead of night waking up entire neighbourhoods.

Helicopters are amazing things but you don't want one landing on you!

[Chris Hogg]

An attack of vertigo can be very sudden and is extremely disorienting. By vertigo I mean the condition where everything you see seems to be rotating and spinning round in front of you, with complete loss of balance. It's like very extreme dizziness. It's not merely feeling wobbly at the knees when looking over a cliff edge. It's a disorder of the balance mechanism of the inner ear, and would be almost impossible to spot in an autopsy.

LOL!