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Helicopter crashes into Pub in Glasgow

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Maybe the pilot simply suffered some kind of medical issue, causing him to take his hand off of the collective?

I'm about 14yrs away from Helo's though so I'm probably wrong.
 
Stevienics said:
"In an emergency situation, such as systems failure, the EC145 OPV is programmed to enter into an automated hover-to-land procedure to safely land the aircraft.[SUP][9]"

Interesting from Wiki[/SUP]
Click to expand...

Just because stuff is written in Wiki it don't mean nowt,,, Wiki by its nature is totally unreliable when it comes to the real world detail. Plus as Rigga has said this aircraft is not an EC145, I've also never had any experience of this mysterious 'automated hover-to-land'. I'm afraid that the current information to date identifies no technical malfunction with the aircraft, in any event its probably best to let the AAIB do their job.
 
Even with a double flame-out the pilot COULD have recovered to Auto-rotate...even into the river.

So: What made the rotors stop? Why wasn't he successful to auto-rotate?

Could it be that he was just too low and pulled too much Collective, thereby slowing the rotors?
 
Arrrr you can only auto rotate above a certain forward speed. If you are in the hover or transition to/from hover you will be Donald Ducked. FYI - that speed for Wessex used to be 80 knots.
I vaguely remember them saying he wasn't that far from his landing pad? (I'm overseas so don't get that much detail on UK news) - so that might ring true.....?
 
Zero speed autos are actually possible but they need very quick recognition of the situation occurring, very fast decision making on the correct response and then quick handling by the pilot. The main rotor head will slow down very, very quickly, believe it or not, if the wrong decision/actions are made/undertaken.
 
Kipper Fleet Bloke said:
Arrrr you can only auto rotate above a certain forward speed. If you are in the hover or transition to/from hover you will be Donald Ducked. FYI - that speed for Wessex used to be 80 knots.
I vaguely remember them saying he wasn't that far from his landing pad? (I'm overseas so don't get that much detail on UK news) - so that might ring true.....?
Click to expand...

They were about a mile from their destination but they could have been looking at something in that area for some other reason. Not unknown for police crews to be browsing


...didn't know a Walter could cruise faster than 60kts? So a minimum of 80kt for an Auto would be almost impossible.
 
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Autorotation limits are more to do with altitude than forward speed although a combination of low speed + low height could be considered to be end-ex.
 
A possible dumb question from an ex-stacker so go easy please. As I understand from that interim report, the pilot would have various indications of his fuel state - gauges, captions and warning tones. According to that report he took off with fuel for 1 hour and 35 minutes and crashed after 1 hour and 37 minutes. Whether various captions showed or tones sounded has yet to be established (that's how I read it). With all the technology available in todays modern aircraft is there not a voice warning system, in addition to the captions and tones, that whispers/eventually shouts in a pilots ear that he's getting low on fuel and that he has X minutes of flying time left? If not, is it something that would help pilots in the future avoid running out of fuel at the most inopportune moment or would it be just another distraction to a pilot in a possible overloaded work situation?
 
vortex ring might also play a part in this,

In addition whilst there may have been some fuel in the tanks, imho the levels do seem rather low. If the ac was in a manoeuvre with the fuel sloshing around in the tank, fuel starvation may have been a factor.
 
Both left and right txfer pumps set to off and both left and right supply tanks empty (or as good as). Main tank still had 76kg fuel. Multiple warning indications of low fuel. So everything points to fuel starvation as the cause of engine failure. Three questions spring to mind:


  1. Why were both txfer pumps switched off?
  2. Why did the pilot appear to ignore the fuel warnings?
  3. Why no radio contact to indicate any problems?
 
I'm not familiar with this type (and I don't know how many fuel tanks there are) but transfer pumps may have been off because the engines take fuel from the main tanks only, and since any other tanks were empty there is no fuel around to transfer - hence why the pumps were selected off. This is just a pure guess by the way
 
There is one main tank that uses transfer pumps to feed fuel into two supply tanks. The supply tanks in turn feed the engines (one tank per engine).

The supply tanks were found empty, whilst 76Kg fuel remained in the main tank.

During flight the volume of fuel in the main tank naturally reduces. Once the fuel reduces below a certain level it leads to situations where a transfer pump can be "out of the water" i.e in the hover the nose is up, fuel in the main tank sloshes rearwards and the fwd pump is uncovered. The instruction in the manual is to turn the fwd transfer pump OFF whilst in this situation to avoid damaging the pump. Once the cab transitions into forward flight the attitude is nose down meaning the fuel sloshes to the front of the tank. In this case the manual says that the fwd transfer pump should be turned back ON (as it is now immersed in fuel) and the rear transfer pump can be turned OFF (as it is now above the fuel level).

Due to the nature of the mission they would have spent time travelling to a tasking (nose down) then hovering at a tasking (nose up), repeat X many times. As the mission continued and fuel in the main tank reduced, the pilot would have to switch the fwd and rear transfer pumps ON/OFF several times. Eventually, both transfer pumps ended up OFF, meaning no fuel from the main tank reaching the supply tanks. Once fuel in the supply tanks run out, engines flame.

But there should have been lots of warnings before this happened.
 
That now makes absolute sense, except for the fuel system design, which sounds laughably dangerous.
 
Then - if you add to Roobarb's simplistic but accurate description; a fuel indication system that is playing up by showing more fuel than you actually have - there is room for a potentially surprising situation!

4Ma:
Little helicopters are very concious about their weight and to put nice speakers and things into them will just use up expensive fuel for no commercial return. This is one of the universally accepted reasons that most smaller aircraft don't have CVFDR's (Cockpit Voice and Flight Data Recorders) and the like as standard - like proper aeroplanes have.
 
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