damoq:
I think the reason there was no fire or explosion was because of the roof structure of the pub. Apparently it was triple layered. I reckon these layers absorbed a lot of the impact. Had it crashed onto the road, then we might have had an explosion.
So what killed the pilot & 2x passengers?
The helicopter itself has an inbuilt ‘crumple zone’ in order to survive high G landings, add that to your ‘crumple zone’ of the 3x layers of roof.
I watched very closely when they lifted the helicopter from within the building, the canvass hid what I was looking for, but I still doubt that any foreign object had penetrated the cockpit.
That was a MASSIVE impact at / or near terminal velocity.
I’m not surprised that there was no fire & I’m not surprised that the occupants could not survive it.
I am surprised, literally gobsmacked, that they removed the aircraft before retrieving all of the bodies.
Someone, somewhere, must have a bloody good reason why they did this?
damoq:
I think the reason there was no fire or explosion was because of the roof structure of the pub. Apparently it was triple layered. I reckon these layers absorbed a lot of the impact. Had it crashed onto the road, then we might have had an explosion.
I am surprised, literally gobsmacked, that they removed the aircraft before retrieving all of the bodies.
Someone, somewhere, must have a bloody good reason why they did this?
Maybe it was felt it would be safer for those who had to get into the remains of the building to do so with out a helicoptor stuck in there.
RE: moving it… Again, i’m just going by the Fire Chief’s comments in media interviews immediately before they removed it… supposedly their were bodies trapped underneath the helicopter, so in order to get to them they had to remove it. This was after it was deemed a ‘recovery’ operation, rather than a rescue.
Personally, if there were bodies underneath several tons of rubble and mangled helicopter, I can’t see how else they’d get them out.
I’m not going to post any theories or speculation but as a commercial helicopter pilot I will say do NOT believe everything you read on PPRUNE and similar sites. Whilst there are some professional pilots there who do know what they are talking about there are twice or three times as many who have no more idea about flying helicopters than what they’ve seen on Airwolf or MS flightsim.
There are a lot of unanswered questions over this incident and unfortunately the only people who know [best] what happened can’t tell us.
I haven’t flown this type of helicopter but I’ll will try to answer any specific questions if anyone has an interest in asking (rather than trying to quote people and saying that’s wrong or not quite right, etc). But I won’t be drawn into speculation about the cause - it’s a bit close to home as I was a paramedic for 15 years and have several police and air ambulance pilot acquaintances/friends and it was a while before I knew they were not involved.
W.
PS. I am in California and 8 hrs behind the UK so might be a delay in replying.
PilotWolf:
I’m not going to post any theories or speculation but as a commercial helicopter pilot I will say do NOT believe everything you read on PPRUNE and similar sites. Whilst there are some professional pilots there who do know what they are talking about there are twice or three times as many who have no more idea about flying helicopters than what they’ve seen on Airwolf or MS flightsim.
There are a lot of unanswered questions over this incident and unfortunately the only people who know [best] what happened can’t tell us.
I haven’t flown this type of helicopter but I’ll will try to answer any specific questions if anyone has an interest in asking (rather than trying to quote people and saying that’s wrong or not quite right, etc). But I won’t be drawn into speculation about the cause - it’s a bit close to home as I was a paramedic for 15 years and have several police and air ambulance pilot acquaintances/friends and it was a while before I knew they were not involved.
W.
PS. I am in California and 8 hrs behind the UK so might be a delay in replying.
It has been said by witnesses that the helicopter was hovering and fell out of the sky,
would what I believe is called auto rotation have given the pilot a chance of landing? or
is forward momentum required?
Given the site of the accident do you think it possible that the pilot was trying to
ditch in the river?
oatcake1967:
Given the site of the accident do you think it possible that the pilot was trying to
ditch in the river?
I doubt it because it was a dark and cold night, in aviation I think ditching is frowned upon because it’s so dangerous, might have been a bit safer landing on a roof…
Possibly, I did notice when it was removed that the flotation devices on the skids had activated - though it’s possible this happened during/as a result of the crash, I guess.
More likely, there’s a fairly large / wide open junction right outside the pub - which would have been relatively quiet at that time of night. Other than a nearby car park (likely with cars in it), that’s pretty much the only open enough spot you could stick a helicopter nearby. Lots of high-ish buildings to navigate if you wanted to go anywhere else. Certainly, if you had a couple of seconds to decide where to put it down… it’d be that junction, or in the river.
All speculation though, we don’t know if he was trying to crash land, or if it just happened. I guess we never will either
Theres a large open car park next to where it happend thats normally quiet at night aswell as the glasgow green close by,massive green park land with open spaces
I had read somewhere before that a helicopter can only hover in a specific area for a limited amount of time before it loses lift due to a lack of air beneath the rotors (?negative pressure). Can anyone confirm if this is right?
Edit: however they can do a pinnacle landing/hover, very cool!
If it did drop vertically, which everything is pointing too, then I’d imagine that the pilot had no idea what they’d be landing on.
If you look at the heli, it has glass in the footwells but not in the floor. To be looking directly downwards he’d need an eyeball where his arse was & his arse would need to be hanging out the side window.
This heli dropped vertically, like a stone from a great height, some are reporting as high as 700ft.
The blades were not rotating at the time of impact.
Chas:
If it did drop vertically, which everything is pointing too, then I’d imagine that the pilot had no idea what they’d be landing on.
If you look at the heli, it has glass in the footwells but not in the floor. To be looking directly downwards he’d need an eyeball where his arse was & his arse would need to be hanging out the side window.
This heli dropped vertically, like a stone from a great height, some are reporting as high as 700ft.
The blades were not rotating at the time of impact.
If the blades suddenly stopped turning, then surely that points to gearbox failure?? If he crew died landing on a wooden roof then I would think landing on the hard road would be no good either.
OK so I m typing this in the iPhone so excuse any typos and missed questions. Likewise not going to try quoting people.
Autorotation is possible from a hover. It’s taught in basic training from about 5 feet of the ground but if they were hovering (not confirmed either way that I know off) at around 700 - 1000 feet it could have been done fairly successfully for an experienced pilot. Hopefully he would have made a reccy of the area for suitable place to put it down in that situation. Large flat areas without obstructions are obviously the best. He would have tried to trade his altitude for some forward speed - at that height he wouldn’t have got far. I don’t know what the glide ratio of height to distance is for that type.
You can manoeuvre during an auto but again at low level time is the factor and you are going down albeit in a controlled manner. Aim for the spot you want to land on - ideally heading into wind (gives more lift). Usually you would flare to slow the machine down at around 10-15 feet before touching down. That will slow the rotors down drastically.
I m pretty sure the 135 has a low inertia rotor system. This means that not much energy is ‘stored’ in the blades. Other machines like the Bell Jetranger have higher inertia systems and a flight instruction show off involves autorotation it to the ground and then using the ‘stored’ energy to lift it up off the ground and turn it through 90 degrees before putting it down again!
With a twin engines machine autorotation is rarely required as if you get an engine failure that engine will just disengage and the other will continue to drive the rotors. If both fail together or one after the other then autorotation is the only option.
There are obviously scenarios where autorotation isn’t going to work - usually involves major missing parts such as rotors, gearbox and tail booms.
I know it was fitted with pop out floats but likewise no idea if that was done by the pilot or in the crash. The river probably wouldn’t be the first choice but it certain would be an option.
Main rotor gearbox failures tend to be catastrophic if they seize and likely would have come away from it in the air.
PilotWolf:
OK so I m typing this in the iPhone so excuse any typos and missed questions. Likewise not going to try quoting people.
Autorotation is possible from a hover. It’s taught in basic training from about 5 feet of the ground but if they were hovering (not confirmed either way that I know off) at around 700 - 1000 feet it could have been done fairly successfully for an experienced pilot. Hopefully he would have made a reccy of the area for suitable place to put it down in that situation. Large flat areas without obstructions are obviously the best. He would have tried to trade his altitude for some forward speed - at that height he wouldn’t have got far. I don’t know what the glide ratio of height to distance is for that type.
You can manoeuvre during an auto but again at low level time is the factor and you are going down albeit in a controlled manner. Aim for the spot you want to land on - ideally heading into wind (gives more lift). Usually you would flare to slow the machine down at around 10-15 feet before touching down. That will slow the rotors down drastically.
With a twin engines machine autorotation is rarely required as if you get an engine failure that engine will just disengage and the other will continue to drive the rotors. If both fail together or one after the other then autorotation is the only option.
I know it was fitted with pop out floats but likewise no idea if that was done by the pilot or in the crash. The river probably wouldn’t be the first choice but it certain would be an option.
W
Very interesting I’m sure, but not much use in this scenario.
The rotors were not rotating, so any talk of a helicopters capabilities during auto rotation are irrelevant.
PilotWolf:
Usually you would flare to slow the machine down at around 10-15 feet before touching down. That will slow the rotors down drastically.
You might want to think about this for awhile, then amend it accordingly.
We don’t know for sure that the rotors weren’t turning. Or at least the last time I checked the news it’s based in speculation and witness reports which tend to be unreliable at best.
What is your issue with flaring and/or slowing the rotors rpm?
PilotWolf:
We don’t know for sure that the rotors weren’t turning. Or at least the last time I checked the news it’s based in speculation and witness reports which tend to be unreliable at best.
What is your issue with flaring and/or slowing the rotors rpm?
PW
We don’t know anything for sure, except that a helicopter crashed through the roof of a pub & 9 people died.
You will have a hard time convincing anyone that the rotors were rotating at the time of impact, everything that we have seen so far indicates that they were’nt.
Interestingly, no one is yet insisting that they definitely were rotating !
I don’t have an issue with flaring, I have an issue with your claim that flaring drastically reduces the rotors RPM.
