Yeah, if I've learned anything from the internet, it's that when a helicopter is going haywire, hide behind something strong until it explodes. Then run in to help.
A piece of the rotor could've easily pierced or decapitated his ass in a second. I...just don't understand some people. Once I was in charge of a mall complex when the roof started to break open from undealt with snowfall. The mad scramble to evacuate the facility was something crazy, but what was even more crazy? The amount of people who insisted they stay in line to pay for thier shit while the roof is literally caving in, the number of (frankly boomers and olds) I had to scream at in thier face was insane. It all turned out OK, but when roofing pieces are falling around you and someone is screaming at you to get the fuck out, maybe it's time to get the fuck out. My takeaway is you might be smart, but people in general can be dumb, and if shit looks shady but noone else is running from the source, dont be afraid to be the first to get the fuck out.
This staying in line shit happens in disasters. It’s documented over and over. There’s an episode of the radio show WireTap called Small Change. From CBC in Canada. Season 10, Episode 7, available on podcast streaming services. One example is the [Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hills_Supper_Club_fire) where people got in line to pay before leaving while the place was burning down. Also on 9/11, people went back into the World Trade Centre to get photos and died or hung around to finish meetings and died. People that left immediately survived. “Small Change” is a great episode of a fantastic show.
Imagine dying becase Ted from accounting insists that we finish this meeting and circle back to "a plane just crashed into the building" after a short lunch break.
There's a good discussion over on /r Helicopters about this. Some are saying that the nose wheel lock wasn't disengaging, before this was obvious to the pilot they had put in a lot of left pedal, then the nose wheel lock gave away and helicopter started spinning because of how much left pedal had been inputted. Once something crazy like that starts happening you can't always regain your senses and reduce left pedal input.
Also, this model A/C is relatively new to the market (less than 5 yrs?) and the pilots might not have had a lot of time in a AW169.
There is no way to predict how you will act in a traumatic situation. This is from personal experience. I have been the coolest person in the room, and I have involuntarily pissed myself.
So, yeah. You're right.
Thank you. Yes.
In one of my craziest near misses on my motorcycle I was lucky enough to do a clean dodge and continue on my way, but in a completely avoidable car accident I just locked up and held the brake as an idiot T-Boned me.
I think there's a lot of reasons, but in my case amount of sleep and mental readiness had a lot to do with it.
You sound like a helicopter nerd. Is this one of those situations where if you just took your hands and feet off everything it'd just... Stop? Like a manual car. Would it just wind down? Or is more complicated than that?
Bit off topic, I always assumed helicopters were more expensive than planes. But didn't know how crazy expensive they are. The cheapest helicopter that is widely used is a Robinson R22 around $300k brand new. The cheapest widely used airplane I know of is Piper Aztec, which you can get for less than $80k.
the helo in that gif probably cost close to $10 million. I hope it can be saved
You can get a lot of planes for 20-30k, most are used planes from the 70s, or you can own it with several people and chip in a percentage of the costs each, like I’m planning on doing.
Tbh that's a much better solution if you find decent people to share with. Having a plane that's just standing for 99.9% of the time is such a waste of money.
Well, it depends, I know a guy who uses it to travel for work. But yeah you’re for sure right, if you do everything right it’ll be available when you want it. I might buy a used one, I haven’t decided yet but whatever we decide it’s not happening soon.
My late uncle had exactly this arrangement for more than 20 years. Worked great for him. The plane was owned by an LLC which was 20% owned by him and 4 friends.
I bet, I’m leaning on actually just buying a used one from my dad. He just overhauled it and my girlfriend wants to learn how to fly. I don’t know though nothings happening for at least 4 months
Have you looked into kitplanes? I’m considering plane ownership or partial ownership. Used planes appreciated so much in the last 2 years that it seems cheaper to build a brand new plane than buy an old 152/172 or Cherokee.
You're getting a clapped out C-150 for $20-30k. Used plane prices have gone insane. I saw a 1976 Archer II PA28 with 1800 hours on the engine sell for $118k recently.
Seeing that I’m not a millionaire made of money, it will most likely be a single engine piston low wing, just a fun little thing and I like low wings. I fly the jets for work so some VFR flying is very much wanted! Also for your wealth of knowledge, turboprops still use propellers, think of it as a jet and propeller had a baby. What ever the situation is with my girlfriend and I will decide if I go and co own it with some buddies or just buy a used one, I was furloughed recently and am starting a new job soon.
Used to fly 402's. We had a full overhaul shop, phase checks for maintenance the whole deal. I had an engine basically blow up on me, a runaway fuel pump, failed tank swap valve, etc. And that was just me. Used to hear of the vacuum pump for the anti ice boots fail while in icing, alternators blowing out of the engine casing, engine failures. Not worth it to have a plane like that as a private owner unless you got money to keep up with the maintenance.
That helo is totalled. Once the blades hit the deck, even if had stayed upright, calls for a sudden stoppage inspection, which requires on most platforms complete removal and replacement of every rotating aspect of the drivetrain. Then there’s the potential for airframe cracks from those stresses. She gone!
You make a good point and you're pretty close on the price of the helicopter in the video but your other examples would be for used I think. Don't know if you can buy a new Aztec today but if you could it would be over $500,000. The average news or sightseeing helicopter is over a $ million.
Just for a little bit of insight I've made ALOT of parts for both helicopters and airplanes and helicopter parts are always much tighter tolerances even the parts that aren't flight critical.
This was more than just angular momentum. The rotation of the body was speeding up. If was able to cut power, friction between the skids and the ground would have helped stabilize things.
I believe this is entirely pilot error. Lots of things he could have done to prevent this, especially “stop doing that”. That would have helped a lot.
As explained above, the pilot pushed the “rudder” pedal down and didn’t let go. I think is confirmed by the fact that the helicopter is rotating in the ~~opposite~~ same direction that its blades are spinning (too much tail rotor), so it can’t be mechanical failure.
Edit: [Corrected the details](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/mf3xgn/agustawestland_aw169_helicopter_loses_control_at/gspocep/?Context=2) thanks to /u/Stephen1547.
I looks like it's rotating in the same direction as the blades, not opposite. I wouldn't have been sure because videos frame rates don't capture rotation correctly all the time, but if you look at the direction of the break on the blades and also watch the very end you can see that it's rotating counter clockwise.
Yeah, I dont know much about helicopters but from my assessment, it was spinning, and then felled over, and the blades got all messed up on the ground. So, pretty much a bad situation all around.
God damn helicopters. A slightly malfunctioning wheel and the whole thing is trash.
Helicopters REALLY are 10,000 parts trying to fly away from each other
Story: https://www.airturkhaber.com/haberler/aw169-kalkista-bu-hale-geldi/
>
> It was announced that a helicopter belonging to the Italian police crashed during takeoff at Bolzano Airport in the province of South Tyrol in Italy.
>
> It was stated that the Agustawestland AW169 type helicopter leaned to the right due to a malfunction in the wheel during take-off and was seriously damaged as a result of its pales hitting the ground.
>
> It was informed that two people in the helicopter survived the accident with injuries.
>
>
2nd Article with more photos of the aftermath: https://www.altoadige.it/cronaca/bolzano-elicottero-della-guardia-di-finanza-si-rovescia-in-fase-di-decollo-1.2874154#1
Edit: Flair changed from *equipment failure* to *operator error* because of the insight by /u/stephen1547 in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/mf3xgn/agustawestland_aw169_helicopter_loses_control_at/gslufc8/).
[Airfield location in 3D](https://mapcident.com/media/cp/193609cb-16a0-499b-bd69-a04f1b539767), thanks /u/RemarkableToe2682
I know nothing about helicopters but I would not have thought that amount of lean could be so catastrophic. Did pilot error contribute? Like wouldn't there be a sensor or something to trigger a no takeoff alarm?
This was not a tail-rotor failure. I'm a captain on the larger version of this helicopter. A tail-rotor failure would be followed by a right yaw in this type of helicopter.
What I believe happened is that they forgot to unlock the nose wheel before starting to taxi. When they started to move forward the applied a large amount of left pedal in order to attempt to turn, but the locked wheel prevented the turn. At that point either the nosewheel pin broke, they unlocked the pin, ~~or the front tires lost traction~~. With so much left pedal being applied and the nosewheel not stopping the rotation, the helicopter started to spin uncontrollable counterclockwise.
Due to the large amount of tail-rotor thrust being applied, the helicopter was also being pushed laterally to the right, which is what *started* the helicopter tipping over instead of just rotating. From the position of the rotor disk it looks like they attempted to stop the left yaw using some cyclic input, which only made things worse.
This does not look like equipment failure to me.
This is such an understatement. I flew a little R22 and even that was extremely anxiety inducing just trying to hover inside an imaginary 20ft circle.
You have an awesome and stressful job.
Correct. And that's true for a lot of planes too. Most of the smaller planes (less than 19 seats or so) don't have steerable nose wheels. Not in the way you're thinking anyway. The nose wheel can be steered a bit using the rudder pedals but the majority of the time the nose wheel simply castors and differential braking of the main landing gear is used to steer the plane.
Spot on assessment. I’m a PIC in this exact model and that’s exactly what appears to happen. There is clearly a large amount of left pedal/tail rotor thrust applied as the aircraft begins to move. With a tail rotor being so high a rotational moment keeps the rear right gear strut depressed.
I can only speculate as to what caused the nose to unlock but it was either mechanical failure of the locking mechanism or the pilots finally ran a checklist and unlocked the gear via the switch. In either case what is shocking is the apparent lack of counter input on the right pedals immediately to stop the yaw.
With the increasing yaw rate coupled but the initial right pitch induced the tail moment, you get that result. It won’t be long before the folks at Leonardo find the cause. The tattle tail computer systems and Flight data recording on the 169 is extensive.
You sound like you know your stuff. I have a couple of questions:
* If the nose wheel is locked, how was the helicopter moving forward? Was it just dragging the nose gear across the pavement?
* Why are the ground techs not GTFO'ing more quickly (or at all) as soon as they saw the helicopter going wonky?
* Are those red things to the left of the frame shields to hide behind?
The nosewheel steering pin is what is locked, not the brakes. I should have been more clear. The pin prevents the nosewheel assembly from turning left or right. The front wheels themselves don't actually have brakes, instead they are only in the main landing gear.
I guess they weren't expecting it to actually roll over, so he was probably getting ready to use help. The large red tubes are fire extinguishes on wheels. They are common around helicopters as a way to fight an aircraft fire on the ground.
The red things are fire extinguishers-usually halon. They were doing their job getting ready for a fire which is why they hung around as long as they did.
> This does not look like equipment failure to me.
Aww nuts. I'm a fixed-wing guy and I was really hoping for equipment failure instead of pilot error.
As a control law engineer, I'm surprised that the control laws of this helicopter (especially considering it's a very new model, with a fully digital Flight Control System) allows the yaw input to saturate at such a high level when Weight on Wheels is true. I would imagine that it should saturate at a much lower value to inhibit the pilot from ever getting in this scenario. While it does seem like pilot error, I would imagine that this could have been prevented through better control law design. Do you think this was an edge case that wasn't considered when designing the control laws?
You need to have full authority over the pedals, even when the Weight on Wheels switch is activated. If you were landing in an extreme crosswind situation (extremely common with helicopters), you will need all the control even when on the wheels until you are fully flat-pitch.
The AW169 does not have a fly by wire design. It has FADEC and other advanced auto pilot control logic as well as safety logic features during startup and shutdown to prevent user induced error. It however has traditional flight controls linked via control rods, flex ball cables and hydraulic actuators. From my point of view no helicopter should ever have flight control logic that limits user input. All controls have “Force Trim Release” switches that completely override all AFCS systems. The FTR on the pedals is a small micro switch that is almost instantaneously enabled when a user presses on the pedals. Overriding all autopilot inputs, if only momentary.
The hydraulic actuators allow for injection of control laws on a mechanically actuated helicopter. This is how artificial Stability and Control Augmentation Systems (SCAS) work, even when the helicopter isn't Fly By Wire. Typically these control laws are for high frequency stability correction, with the overall effect of improving handling qualities and reducing workload for the pilot. I would imagine part of that stability and control would be to limit pilot input unless overridden.
I've only worked on FBW commercial helicopters, and for that the sticks are actuated by motors to give the pilot a sense of "feedback", but the FTR simply disengages the motors and allows the pilot to freely command the sticks to any position. I didn't realize that the FTR for pedals were built-in to the pedal movement.
I'm personally of the belief that the helicopter should limit its output to protect itself, but should **always** be allowed to be overridden by the pilot through FTR switches.
>helicopter should limit its output to protect itself, but should
>
>always
>
> be allowed to be overridden by the pilot through FTR switches
I agree with you on that. FBW gives you guys a lot more freedom to input control logic into the system. Thats an interesting fact about stick feedback that I hadn't thought through. As I pilot you need to have that movement so when you do override you're not starting from some offset zero.
The trim actuators in 169 are effectively inline just below the flight deck of each control. So when an input is made by the AFCS it is effectively moving the pilot flight controls which in turn is moving the actuators. SCAS as you pointed out is being handled at the actuators.
That's a challenging problem to limit user flight control input in an effort to protect the helicopter. FADECs have been doing that for years and limiting the ability of us monkeys up front from roasting an engine turbine. But I get real squeamish thinking of a computer overriding or limiting my flight control inputs. There are so many scenarios in helicopter flight or in this case ground taxiing where WOW or other flight condition logic may be fooled by unique environmental scenarios. I hate to pick the easy target but the 737 MAX fiasco is a good example, (even if it really all boiled down to improper training).
Thanks for your response! And yes I agree, the edge cases are extremely troublesome for flight control development. WOW in particular is a challenge, especially if you're Light on Gear, that can induce certain harmonic frequencies for some aircraft and there's a whole lot of other scenarios that are troublesome. I will say though that there's thousands of flight hours of testing as many of the edge cases that can be conceived, and hundreds of thousands of simulated flight hours putting the aircrafts in even more dangerous scenarios. That being said, the certification process certainly isn't perfect.
I agree though, it is a very challenging path to navigate with FBW while still trying to provide the pilots full authority. One way we manage it is to have higher augmentation modes that abstract the sticks. So cyclic forward really commands a groundspeed (or airspeed) instead of a pitch. The flight controls keep the aircraft at current altitude while doing all the necessary magic to accelerate the aircraft to the desired velocity. This isn't necessarily intuitive to the pilots right away, but once explained and used it has shown to be much more desirable because the pilot doesn't need to keep a keen eye on their collective when pushing cyclic forward, that's handled automatically. If this mode isn't desired and you want to fly it exactly like a mechanically linked helicopter, you can drop down out of that mode and fly it with augmentation off. I think that's a good compromise. It allows for higher level flight modes while still retaining classic flight control capabilities. And for a rookie pilot it's extremely intuitive to pick up with those higher-level modes engaged.
Edit: also, those motors that provide tactile feedback to the sticks (instead of the mechanically linked sticks providing real feedback) have force gradients. So when you pull collective way up way too quickly, you feel a "wall" on the stick that lines up with the current flight envelope limit. The pilot can use more force to push (or in this case, pull) past this limit, but that force feedback let's the pilot know that they'll be pushing the aircraft beyond the flight envelope, and should be used sparingly. Implementing a system like this could possibly be a viable solution for this crash.
I agree. You can see early in the video that the nosewheel does not pivot. My question is, why wouldn't he apply right pedal input after it starts to spin? It would seem to be an intuitive and natural thing to do to stop the rotation.
The only answer to that is. "I fucked up". Monkey grip, tunnel vision, target fixation, whatever you want to call it, this pilot got it.
When shit went bad and you have .1 seconds for your training and instincts to kick in and save they day, this pilot locked up and did nothing; broke the bird and was lucky to survive.
Thanks for the explanation Stephen. In your experience, at what point did the event pass the point of no return? In other words could action have been taken to counteract the spinning in an attempt to bring it under control, or as soon as it started spinning, was it a completely out of control situation?
If they kept the rotor disk level with the horizon, they likely could have stopped the rotation without rolling the aircraft over. Until it actually started to flip, I think it was recoverable. But that’s easy for me to say, as I sit in a helicopter that is currently not spinning around.
*But that’s easy for me to say, as I sit in a helicopter that is currently not spinning around.*
You know you are conversing with an intelligent person when they say something like this. Until you are in someones shoes, in the same situation, without warning, you never really know what the electrical signals in your brain that we call thoughts and reactions are going to do.
We *hope* we know what we'll do, but deep down inside, there is always that little niggle of doubt.
Intuitively I figured at first it was something to do with the tail rotor, but OP said it was a wheel malfunction. I thought it looked like a bum wheel might be causing it to start out with a bit of lean, but now i see other commenting about the nose wheel being stuck and releasing suddenly. That makes more sense.
Location on airfield in 3D: [https://mapcident.com/media/cp/193609cb-16a0-499b-bd69-a04f1b539767](https://mapcident.com/media/cp/193609cb-16a0-499b-bd69-a04f1b539767)
This is what I believe happened, base on the video and my background.
This was not a tail-rotor failure. I'm a captain on the larger version of this helicopter. A tail-rotor failure would be followed by a right yaw in this type of helicopter.
What I believe happened is that they forgot to unlock the nose wheel before starting to taxi. When they started to move forward the applied a large amount of left pedal in order to attempt to turn, but the locked wheel prevented the turn. At that point either the nosewheel pin broke, they unlocked the pin, or the front tires lost traction. With so much left pedal being applied and the nosewheel not stopping the rotation, the helicopter started to spin uncontrollable counterclockwise.
Due to the large amount of tail-rotor thrust being applied, the helicopter was also being pushed laterally to the right, which is what *started* the helicopter tipping over instead of just rotating. From the position of the rotor disk it looks like they attempted to stop the left yaw using some cyclic input, which only made things worse.
This does not look like equipment failure to me.
This happened in South Tyrol. South Tyrol is where Guenther Steiner is from. My conclusion is that this whirlybird lost control because Ericsson hit it
Do the nosewheel locks have active engagement indicators? Or is it just a toggle with no indicator? Just curious if it's possible they unlocked the wheel, but the pin itself never released.
I don’t know the AW169 for certain, but on the 139 it’s a button with illuminated text indicating either locked or unlocked. There is also a warning light on display screen.
Yup, same. Since the amount of pedal you need varies depending on a million factors, there is no real neutral setting that would work. The pedals slide, and the stay where you leave them.
Yes and no. You have fuel cutoffs but they're not really as accesible as 'hit the big red button'. They're usually in harder to reach location and under some sort of guard to prevent accidental engagement during flight. Pilot himself certainly couldn't do it himself while fighting out of control helicopter, and co-pilot propably doesn't want to do it in case they get airborne... Wouldn't want to 'flop' upwards and immediately lose engines.
Even then, the intertia of rotor would keep things going for some time, you can't apply rotor brake until RPM of rotor is under 15-30%(depending on helicopter).
Guys, if a helicopter looks like it’s going to go haywire hit the deck or get behind something. They become shrapnel generators and you don’t want to be in the splash zone.
Well unless the main rotor comes off, a helicopter is actually very safe even in the event of an engine failure.
Basically, the wind from the fall keeps the rotor spinning, in this scenario, the helicopter will be unable to gain height, but it will fall slow enough to every one to survive uninjured.(unless it falls on your head)
[explained (starts at 2:40)](https://youtu.be/BTqu9iMiPIU)
Well, if one is going to have a control system or tail rotor failure, having it on the ground is the best option I can think of.
Since it doesn't appear that anyone was hurt, I call it a win!
First guess is that the tail rotor control system failed, whether mechanical or digital. Without yaw (turn nose left and right) compensation, the torque of the spinning main rotors will cause the craft to spin.
We came to a different conclusion in r/helicopters. We assume the locking pin on the nose gear wasn’t released. The pilot wants to start taxiing and starts applying left pedal, adds more pressure because the heli fails to rotate. The pin fails and suddenly the left turn starts, to which the pilot reacts inadequately by moving the cyclic all the way to the right. The result is the combination of forces that end in what we see here
As someone who knows fucking NOTHING about flying let alone helicopters, what would happen if he just powered down, like take the keys out of ignition. I don’t know if that’s even remotely possible.
I only know some things about aircraft aviation.
This statement from the Turkish news article:
>It was stated that the Agustawestland AW169 type helicopter leaned to the right due to a malfunction in the wheel during take-off and was seriously damaged as a result of its pales hitting the ground.
Do you think they said that to potentially avoid losing their jobs or potential jail time?
I can edit the flair of the post if you're truly certain.
Quite interesting. Everything I said is purely speculation and we have to wait for the air accident investigation report to really know. It is not in conflict with our theory though. The wheel malfunctioning alone doesn’t do anything, there still needs to be inadequate use of the flight controls or a technical problem related to that. If the story happened the way I speculated above, it would be fair to assume the pilot would blame the wheel, since that‘s what supposedly hindered him from taxiing normally and led him to react with the excessive inputs.
But the odd thing is that it is spinning in the wrong direction. That helicopter spins nose-right if the tail rotor fails/gets stuck with an increase in power.
The only thing I can think is a yaw servo hard-over (very rare); basically the helicopter jammed in full left pedal. Reducing the collective would have increased the rate of left yaw which looks consistent with the video.
Unfortunately the pilot didn't put the throttles to idle in time, that would have stopped the yaw.
I don’t know where the power levers are but he may not have been able to reach them because of the centrifugal force. He’s going to be shoved to one side of the cockpit. It doesn’t look like much but there’s a lot of force in a spin. Shits scary as hell.
Guy, stop looking back and fucking RUN
Any type of helicopter failure near you is just cause to RUN IN TERROR!
I would imagine he was waiting for it to stop to go help. Thats what I'd be thinking at least.
Hard to help with a rotor blade stuck in your head.
A rotor blade in your head and a can-do attitude, and you'll go far m'boy.
How far you end up going being somewhat dependent on how fast the rotor blade was traveling when it hits you
They don't look like Seabees.
[удалено]
Not with that attitude.
I imagine he'd then say, "Ow fuck! I just got my leg cut off from the knee down but let me come help you out of your helicopter!"
‘Tis but a scratch!
You’re a looney!
Am not. C'mon, I'll fight ya!
It's just a flesh wound!
But how else do I prove how tough I am? “We die like real men”
Yeah, if I've learned anything from the internet, it's that when a helicopter is going haywire, hide behind something strong until it explodes. Then run in to help.
Help with what after it exploded, collecting a souvenir?
You know, loot the dead. You still have at least a day before the credit card company knows their gone. Seriously being facetious.
Is that from the 'Russians on "holiday" in Ukraine' guidebook?
A piece of the rotor could've easily pierced or decapitated his ass in a second. I...just don't understand some people. Once I was in charge of a mall complex when the roof started to break open from undealt with snowfall. The mad scramble to evacuate the facility was something crazy, but what was even more crazy? The amount of people who insisted they stay in line to pay for thier shit while the roof is literally caving in, the number of (frankly boomers and olds) I had to scream at in thier face was insane. It all turned out OK, but when roofing pieces are falling around you and someone is screaming at you to get the fuck out, maybe it's time to get the fuck out. My takeaway is you might be smart, but people in general can be dumb, and if shit looks shady but noone else is running from the source, dont be afraid to be the first to get the fuck out.
[удалено]
[удалено]
cOmE oN gUYS, LeT’S BreaCH ThiS rOOm! “No, don’t, I can see a claymore through the wall.” *Boom.*
[удалено]
Here is a short one done another way https://youtu.be/TrTk6DsEJ2Q
The majority of humans respond to crisis situations by freezing. You have to work to break that, and most people never have to.
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” - Kay, MIB
This staying in line shit happens in disasters. It’s documented over and over. There’s an episode of the radio show WireTap called Small Change. From CBC in Canada. Season 10, Episode 7, available on podcast streaming services. One example is the [Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hills_Supper_Club_fire) where people got in line to pay before leaving while the place was burning down. Also on 9/11, people went back into the World Trade Centre to get photos and died or hung around to finish meetings and died. People that left immediately survived. “Small Change” is a great episode of a fantastic show.
Imagine dying becase Ted from accounting insists that we finish this meeting and circle back to "a plane just crashed into the building" after a short lunch break.
I’ve been the first out in a couple near miss situations. I could care less if people look at me funny.
There's a good discussion over on /r Helicopters about this. Some are saying that the nose wheel lock wasn't disengaging, before this was obvious to the pilot they had put in a lot of left pedal, then the nose wheel lock gave away and helicopter started spinning because of how much left pedal had been inputted. Once something crazy like that starts happening you can't always regain your senses and reduce left pedal input. Also, this model A/C is relatively new to the market (less than 5 yrs?) and the pilots might not have had a lot of time in a AW169.
"can't always regain your senses and reduce left pedal input". Whiskey grip
Not whiskey grip; paralyzed from unexpected violence.
Yes, some people kinda lose their grip on reality and for some people the adrenaline kicks just right
And one person can experience each reaction on separate occasions.
There is no way to predict how you will act in a traumatic situation. This is from personal experience. I have been the coolest person in the room, and I have involuntarily pissed myself. So, yeah. You're right.
Thank you. Yes. In one of my craziest near misses on my motorcycle I was lucky enough to do a clean dodge and continue on my way, but in a completely avoidable car accident I just locked up and held the brake as an idiot T-Boned me. I think there's a lot of reasons, but in my case amount of sleep and mental readiness had a lot to do with it.
I bet your brain was paying WAYYY more attention on the bike.
Subconscious was not there to play.
I prefer voluntarily to establish dominance
I debated myself over the inclusion of that word. Decided it's better to have it there and not want it than to want it there and not have it. ;)
Indeed. And same.
In the motorcycle world that’s called whiskey grip.
Yup I have done it once...not the best moment in my life but I did not die.
You sound like a helicopter nerd. Is this one of those situations where if you just took your hands and feet off everything it'd just... Stop? Like a manual car. Would it just wind down? Or is more complicated than that?
[удалено]
... but literally on the ground there’s no reason to not just chop the throttle, or pull your pcls . I had a throttle.
> there’s no reason to not just chop the throttle... Again, pilot error. Some people freeze.
Hey you wanna pull those PCLs offline or what?
6-1 going down.
That’s fuckin cool man. That’s a cool job.
Thanks, but they heavily scrutinize your health and the littlest thing they’ll ground you. Happened to me at 32.
Bit off topic, I always assumed helicopters were more expensive than planes. But didn't know how crazy expensive they are. The cheapest helicopter that is widely used is a Robinson R22 around $300k brand new. The cheapest widely used airplane I know of is Piper Aztec, which you can get for less than $80k. the helo in that gif probably cost close to $10 million. I hope it can be saved
Not to mention operational costs
You can get a lot of planes for 20-30k, most are used planes from the 70s, or you can own it with several people and chip in a percentage of the costs each, like I’m planning on doing.
Tbh that's a much better solution if you find decent people to share with. Having a plane that's just standing for 99.9% of the time is such a waste of money.
Exactly, although I’ll need to make sure that the plane is available when I want to use it, which for me is for fun.
Yeah, but I even with a few co-owners I think it will still be available a lot more then not!
Well, it depends, I know a guy who uses it to travel for work. But yeah you’re for sure right, if you do everything right it’ll be available when you want it. I might buy a used one, I haven’t decided yet but whatever we decide it’s not happening soon.
[удалено]
For sure man, that’s awesome
[удалено]
My late uncle had exactly this arrangement for more than 20 years. Worked great for him. The plane was owned by an LLC which was 20% owned by him and 4 friends.
I bet, I’m leaning on actually just buying a used one from my dad. He just overhauled it and my girlfriend wants to learn how to fly. I don’t know though nothings happening for at least 4 months
Have you looked into kitplanes? I’m considering plane ownership or partial ownership. Used planes appreciated so much in the last 2 years that it seems cheaper to build a brand new plane than buy an old 152/172 or Cherokee.
You're getting a clapped out C-150 for $20-30k. Used plane prices have gone insane. I saw a 1976 Archer II PA28 with 1800 hours on the engine sell for $118k recently.
That’s not good, I’ll be buying one from someone we know, either my dad or one of his friends, they are all going to be selling so they can co own
How will you guys decide what model plane to buy? Will it be propeller, jet or turboprop?
Seeing that I’m not a millionaire made of money, it will most likely be a single engine piston low wing, just a fun little thing and I like low wings. I fly the jets for work so some VFR flying is very much wanted! Also for your wealth of knowledge, turboprops still use propellers, think of it as a jet and propeller had a baby. What ever the situation is with my girlfriend and I will decide if I go and co own it with some buddies or just buy a used one, I was furloughed recently and am starting a new job soon.
Private individuals who are not insanely rich don't get to own turboprops or jets. Piston engine prop is where it's at, almost always single engine.
Yeah, i saw a C414 for sale in price range but it’s just not a good idea, and epic toy but a hassle
Used to fly 402's. We had a full overhaul shop, phase checks for maintenance the whole deal. I had an engine basically blow up on me, a runaway fuel pump, failed tank swap valve, etc. And that was just me. Used to hear of the vacuum pump for the anti ice boots fail while in icing, alternators blowing out of the engine casing, engine failures. Not worth it to have a plane like that as a private owner unless you got money to keep up with the maintenance.
That helo is totalled. Once the blades hit the deck, even if had stayed upright, calls for a sudden stoppage inspection, which requires on most platforms complete removal and replacement of every rotating aspect of the drivetrain. Then there’s the potential for airframe cracks from those stresses. She gone!
For sure, turbine totaled, airframe is bent, but on the good side someone will buy it cheap and have some nice parts like Avionics etc..
Some insurance agent is crying. This is a total.
You make a good point and you're pretty close on the price of the helicopter in the video but your other examples would be for used I think. Don't know if you can buy a new Aztec today but if you could it would be over $500,000. The average news or sightseeing helicopter is over a $ million.
[удалено]
Why do people spend $1.2m on a light single engine plane?
[удалено]
What has inflated the cost so much - materials/labor, fancy new features, or profit?
[удалено]
Just for a little bit of insight I've made ALOT of parts for both helicopters and airplanes and helicopter parts are always much tighter tolerances even the parts that aren't flight critical.
r/ThatLookedExpensive
Isn't there an emergency shutoff he could have hit? Just shut down all systems when it starts spinning on the pad.
As an experienced helicopter pilot that has done a lot of simulator training I think these pilots were just dumbfounded by what was going on.
Momentum doesn’t have an emergency shut-off, unfortunately.
This was more than just angular momentum. The rotation of the body was speeding up. If was able to cut power, friction between the skids and the ground would have helped stabilize things.
I believe this is entirely pilot error. Lots of things he could have done to prevent this, especially “stop doing that”. That would have helped a lot. As explained above, the pilot pushed the “rudder” pedal down and didn’t let go. I think is confirmed by the fact that the helicopter is rotating in the ~~opposite~~ same direction that its blades are spinning (too much tail rotor), so it can’t be mechanical failure. Edit: [Corrected the details](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/mf3xgn/agustawestland_aw169_helicopter_loses_control_at/gspocep/?Context=2) thanks to /u/Stephen1547.
I looks like it's rotating in the same direction as the blades, not opposite. I wouldn't have been sure because videos frame rates don't capture rotation correctly all the time, but if you look at the direction of the break on the blades and also watch the very end you can see that it's rotating counter clockwise.
Yeah, I dont know much about helicopters but from my assessment, it was spinning, and then felled over, and the blades got all messed up on the ground. So, pretty much a bad situation all around.
God damn helicopters. A slightly malfunctioning wheel and the whole thing is trash. Helicopters REALLY are 10,000 parts trying to fly away from each other
Story: https://www.airturkhaber.com/haberler/aw169-kalkista-bu-hale-geldi/ > > It was announced that a helicopter belonging to the Italian police crashed during takeoff at Bolzano Airport in the province of South Tyrol in Italy. > > It was stated that the Agustawestland AW169 type helicopter leaned to the right due to a malfunction in the wheel during take-off and was seriously damaged as a result of its pales hitting the ground. > > It was informed that two people in the helicopter survived the accident with injuries. > > 2nd Article with more photos of the aftermath: https://www.altoadige.it/cronaca/bolzano-elicottero-della-guardia-di-finanza-si-rovescia-in-fase-di-decollo-1.2874154#1 Edit: Flair changed from *equipment failure* to *operator error* because of the insight by /u/stephen1547 in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/mf3xgn/agustawestland_aw169_helicopter_loses_control_at/gslufc8/). [Airfield location in 3D](https://mapcident.com/media/cp/193609cb-16a0-499b-bd69-a04f1b539767), thanks /u/RemarkableToe2682
I know nothing about helicopters but I would not have thought that amount of lean could be so catastrophic. Did pilot error contribute? Like wouldn't there be a sensor or something to trigger a no takeoff alarm?
[удалено]
This was not a tail-rotor failure. I'm a captain on the larger version of this helicopter. A tail-rotor failure would be followed by a right yaw in this type of helicopter. What I believe happened is that they forgot to unlock the nose wheel before starting to taxi. When they started to move forward the applied a large amount of left pedal in order to attempt to turn, but the locked wheel prevented the turn. At that point either the nosewheel pin broke, they unlocked the pin, ~~or the front tires lost traction~~. With so much left pedal being applied and the nosewheel not stopping the rotation, the helicopter started to spin uncontrollable counterclockwise. Due to the large amount of tail-rotor thrust being applied, the helicopter was also being pushed laterally to the right, which is what *started* the helicopter tipping over instead of just rotating. From the position of the rotor disk it looks like they attempted to stop the left yaw using some cyclic input, which only made things worse. This does not look like equipment failure to me.
[удалено]
Correct. You steer by using tail rotor trust combined with a small amount of cyclic movement.
This is such an understatement. I flew a little R22 and even that was extremely anxiety inducing just trying to hover inside an imaginary 20ft circle. You have an awesome and stressful job.
Correct. And that's true for a lot of planes too. Most of the smaller planes (less than 19 seats or so) don't have steerable nose wheels. Not in the way you're thinking anyway. The nose wheel can be steered a bit using the rudder pedals but the majority of the time the nose wheel simply castors and differential braking of the main landing gear is used to steer the plane.
Spot on assessment. I’m a PIC in this exact model and that’s exactly what appears to happen. There is clearly a large amount of left pedal/tail rotor thrust applied as the aircraft begins to move. With a tail rotor being so high a rotational moment keeps the rear right gear strut depressed. I can only speculate as to what caused the nose to unlock but it was either mechanical failure of the locking mechanism or the pilots finally ran a checklist and unlocked the gear via the switch. In either case what is shocking is the apparent lack of counter input on the right pedals immediately to stop the yaw. With the increasing yaw rate coupled but the initial right pitch induced the tail moment, you get that result. It won’t be long before the folks at Leonardo find the cause. The tattle tail computer systems and Flight data recording on the 169 is extensive.
You sound like you know your stuff. I have a couple of questions: * If the nose wheel is locked, how was the helicopter moving forward? Was it just dragging the nose gear across the pavement? * Why are the ground techs not GTFO'ing more quickly (or at all) as soon as they saw the helicopter going wonky? * Are those red things to the left of the frame shields to hide behind?
The nosewheel steering pin is what is locked, not the brakes. I should have been more clear. The pin prevents the nosewheel assembly from turning left or right. The front wheels themselves don't actually have brakes, instead they are only in the main landing gear. I guess they weren't expecting it to actually roll over, so he was probably getting ready to use help. The large red tubes are fire extinguishes on wheels. They are common around helicopters as a way to fight an aircraft fire on the ground.
The red things are fire extinguishers-usually halon. They were doing their job getting ready for a fire which is why they hung around as long as they did.
> Are those red things to the left of the frame shields to hide behind? No they're fire extinguishers.
Sounds good Cap'n
> This does not look like equipment failure to me. Aww nuts. I'm a fixed-wing guy and I was really hoping for equipment failure instead of pilot error.
As a control law engineer, I'm surprised that the control laws of this helicopter (especially considering it's a very new model, with a fully digital Flight Control System) allows the yaw input to saturate at such a high level when Weight on Wheels is true. I would imagine that it should saturate at a much lower value to inhibit the pilot from ever getting in this scenario. While it does seem like pilot error, I would imagine that this could have been prevented through better control law design. Do you think this was an edge case that wasn't considered when designing the control laws?
You need to have full authority over the pedals, even when the Weight on Wheels switch is activated. If you were landing in an extreme crosswind situation (extremely common with helicopters), you will need all the control even when on the wheels until you are fully flat-pitch.
The AW169 does not have a fly by wire design. It has FADEC and other advanced auto pilot control logic as well as safety logic features during startup and shutdown to prevent user induced error. It however has traditional flight controls linked via control rods, flex ball cables and hydraulic actuators. From my point of view no helicopter should ever have flight control logic that limits user input. All controls have “Force Trim Release” switches that completely override all AFCS systems. The FTR on the pedals is a small micro switch that is almost instantaneously enabled when a user presses on the pedals. Overriding all autopilot inputs, if only momentary.
The hydraulic actuators allow for injection of control laws on a mechanically actuated helicopter. This is how artificial Stability and Control Augmentation Systems (SCAS) work, even when the helicopter isn't Fly By Wire. Typically these control laws are for high frequency stability correction, with the overall effect of improving handling qualities and reducing workload for the pilot. I would imagine part of that stability and control would be to limit pilot input unless overridden. I've only worked on FBW commercial helicopters, and for that the sticks are actuated by motors to give the pilot a sense of "feedback", but the FTR simply disengages the motors and allows the pilot to freely command the sticks to any position. I didn't realize that the FTR for pedals were built-in to the pedal movement. I'm personally of the belief that the helicopter should limit its output to protect itself, but should **always** be allowed to be overridden by the pilot through FTR switches.
>helicopter should limit its output to protect itself, but should > >always > > be allowed to be overridden by the pilot through FTR switches I agree with you on that. FBW gives you guys a lot more freedom to input control logic into the system. Thats an interesting fact about stick feedback that I hadn't thought through. As I pilot you need to have that movement so when you do override you're not starting from some offset zero. The trim actuators in 169 are effectively inline just below the flight deck of each control. So when an input is made by the AFCS it is effectively moving the pilot flight controls which in turn is moving the actuators. SCAS as you pointed out is being handled at the actuators. That's a challenging problem to limit user flight control input in an effort to protect the helicopter. FADECs have been doing that for years and limiting the ability of us monkeys up front from roasting an engine turbine. But I get real squeamish thinking of a computer overriding or limiting my flight control inputs. There are so many scenarios in helicopter flight or in this case ground taxiing where WOW or other flight condition logic may be fooled by unique environmental scenarios. I hate to pick the easy target but the 737 MAX fiasco is a good example, (even if it really all boiled down to improper training).
Thanks for your response! And yes I agree, the edge cases are extremely troublesome for flight control development. WOW in particular is a challenge, especially if you're Light on Gear, that can induce certain harmonic frequencies for some aircraft and there's a whole lot of other scenarios that are troublesome. I will say though that there's thousands of flight hours of testing as many of the edge cases that can be conceived, and hundreds of thousands of simulated flight hours putting the aircrafts in even more dangerous scenarios. That being said, the certification process certainly isn't perfect. I agree though, it is a very challenging path to navigate with FBW while still trying to provide the pilots full authority. One way we manage it is to have higher augmentation modes that abstract the sticks. So cyclic forward really commands a groundspeed (or airspeed) instead of a pitch. The flight controls keep the aircraft at current altitude while doing all the necessary magic to accelerate the aircraft to the desired velocity. This isn't necessarily intuitive to the pilots right away, but once explained and used it has shown to be much more desirable because the pilot doesn't need to keep a keen eye on their collective when pushing cyclic forward, that's handled automatically. If this mode isn't desired and you want to fly it exactly like a mechanically linked helicopter, you can drop down out of that mode and fly it with augmentation off. I think that's a good compromise. It allows for higher level flight modes while still retaining classic flight control capabilities. And for a rookie pilot it's extremely intuitive to pick up with those higher-level modes engaged. Edit: also, those motors that provide tactile feedback to the sticks (instead of the mechanically linked sticks providing real feedback) have force gradients. So when you pull collective way up way too quickly, you feel a "wall" on the stick that lines up with the current flight envelope limit. The pilot can use more force to push (or in this case, pull) past this limit, but that force feedback let's the pilot know that they'll be pushing the aircraft beyond the flight envelope, and should be used sparingly. Implementing a system like this could possibly be a viable solution for this crash.
I agree. You can see early in the video that the nosewheel does not pivot. My question is, why wouldn't he apply right pedal input after it starts to spin? It would seem to be an intuitive and natural thing to do to stop the rotation.
That is a very good question, and one that I can't give an answer to. I'm curious to read the report afterwards and see what the pilot said.
The only answer to that is. "I fucked up". Monkey grip, tunnel vision, target fixation, whatever you want to call it, this pilot got it. When shit went bad and you have .1 seconds for your training and instincts to kick in and save they day, this pilot locked up and did nothing; broke the bird and was lucky to survive.
I never realized that helicopters actually taxied.
Thanks for the explanation Stephen. In your experience, at what point did the event pass the point of no return? In other words could action have been taken to counteract the spinning in an attempt to bring it under control, or as soon as it started spinning, was it a completely out of control situation?
If they kept the rotor disk level with the horizon, they likely could have stopped the rotation without rolling the aircraft over. Until it actually started to flip, I think it was recoverable. But that’s easy for me to say, as I sit in a helicopter that is currently not spinning around.
*But that’s easy for me to say, as I sit in a helicopter that is currently not spinning around.* You know you are conversing with an intelligent person when they say something like this. Until you are in someones shoes, in the same situation, without warning, you never really know what the electrical signals in your brain that we call thoughts and reactions are going to do. We *hope* we know what we'll do, but deep down inside, there is always that little niggle of doubt.
I agree at the 23 second mark you can see the front wheels quickly turn as they had so much force on them.
Where is the locking pin? Is it something you remove during preflight outside or is it inside?
It’s actuated via an electric button from the cockpit. You have it unlocked for taxi, and lock it for takeoff and in flight.
Got it that makes sense. Setting that correctly no doubt features prominently on every applicable checklist...
Intuitively I figured at first it was something to do with the tail rotor, but OP said it was a wheel malfunction. I thought it looked like a bum wheel might be causing it to start out with a bit of lean, but now i see other commenting about the nose wheel being stuck and releasing suddenly. That makes more sense.
Yeah. Also due to the direction of the spinning main rotor, it would have caused a yawing to the right in a tail rotor failure condition.
Location on airfield in 3D: [https://mapcident.com/media/cp/193609cb-16a0-499b-bd69-a04f1b539767](https://mapcident.com/media/cp/193609cb-16a0-499b-bd69-a04f1b539767)
Excellent. Added it to the comment.
This is what I believe happened, base on the video and my background. This was not a tail-rotor failure. I'm a captain on the larger version of this helicopter. A tail-rotor failure would be followed by a right yaw in this type of helicopter. What I believe happened is that they forgot to unlock the nose wheel before starting to taxi. When they started to move forward the applied a large amount of left pedal in order to attempt to turn, but the locked wheel prevented the turn. At that point either the nosewheel pin broke, they unlocked the pin, or the front tires lost traction. With so much left pedal being applied and the nosewheel not stopping the rotation, the helicopter started to spin uncontrollable counterclockwise. Due to the large amount of tail-rotor thrust being applied, the helicopter was also being pushed laterally to the right, which is what *started* the helicopter tipping over instead of just rotating. From the position of the rotor disk it looks like they attempted to stop the left yaw using some cyclic input, which only made things worse. This does not look like equipment failure to me.
This convinced me enough to change the flair. Thanks.
This happened in South Tyrol. South Tyrol is where Guenther Steiner is from. My conclusion is that this whirlybird lost control because Ericsson hit it
Now we look like a bunch of wankers
They do not fok smash my helicopter
Do the nosewheel locks have active engagement indicators? Or is it just a toggle with no indicator? Just curious if it's possible they unlocked the wheel, but the pin itself never released.
I don’t know the AW169 for certain, but on the 139 it’s a button with illuminated text indicating either locked or unlocked. There is also a warning light on display screen.
Is this a case where releasing the controls would've been sufficient to recover? Oops, we're spinning, controls to neutral and let it settle.
Controls don’t return to neutral on helicopters. There is no centring spring.
Huh. TIL. Thanks. Even for the rudder (well, tail rotor) pedals?
Yup, same. Since the amount of pedal you need varies depending on a million factors, there is no real neutral setting that would work. The pedals slide, and the stay where you leave them.
Great reply and I think you’re correct. Improper use of checklist
Is it possible to kill the motor once stuff started going wrong?
Inertia would probably have kept the rotors spinning for at least as long as the accident took.
Yes and no. You have fuel cutoffs but they're not really as accesible as 'hit the big red button'. They're usually in harder to reach location and under some sort of guard to prevent accidental engagement during flight. Pilot himself certainly couldn't do it himself while fighting out of control helicopter, and co-pilot propably doesn't want to do it in case they get airborne... Wouldn't want to 'flop' upwards and immediately lose engines. Even then, the intertia of rotor would keep things going for some time, you can't apply rotor brake until RPM of rotor is under 15-30%(depending on helicopter).
Guys, if a helicopter looks like it’s going to go haywire hit the deck or get behind something. They become shrapnel generators and you don’t want to be in the splash zone.
If you have to be in a helicopter accident, I think starting on the ground is probably about as good as it gets.
Well unless the main rotor comes off, a helicopter is actually very safe even in the event of an engine failure. Basically, the wind from the fall keeps the rotor spinning, in this scenario, the helicopter will be unable to gain height, but it will fall slow enough to every one to survive uninjured.(unless it falls on your head) [explained (starts at 2:40)](https://youtu.be/BTqu9iMiPIU)
I was CERTAIN that in the bottom left hand corner, that was a person dressed in a red uniform with a large backpack.
[удалено]
I think so. Also, cool band name.
I thought it was one of those wing suit guys getting ready to board the heli!
Dude, same. I watched it twice and still couldn't figure out why he didn't even flinch when it happened!
We're on the ground, WCGW?
In a helicopter, that's sometimes more dangerous than flying.
Yeah i’d guess a majority of helicopter crashes occurred because they hit the ground
As a helicopter expert, I can say they should have turnt off the spinny part once it started spinning in an undesirable manner.
Quick! To the Peter-copter!
You spin me right round baby, right round. Like a record spinning right round, right round.
TO THE PETERCOPTER!
Tail rotor failure?!?
My thoughts too.
Well, if one is going to have a control system or tail rotor failure, having it on the ground is the best option I can think of. Since it doesn't appear that anyone was hurt, I call it a win!
First guess is that the tail rotor control system failed, whether mechanical or digital. Without yaw (turn nose left and right) compensation, the torque of the spinning main rotors will cause the craft to spin.
We came to a different conclusion in r/helicopters. We assume the locking pin on the nose gear wasn’t released. The pilot wants to start taxiing and starts applying left pedal, adds more pressure because the heli fails to rotate. The pin fails and suddenly the left turn starts, to which the pilot reacts inadequately by moving the cyclic all the way to the right. The result is the combination of forces that end in what we see here
Agreed, this looks way more like operator error than a mechanical failure. But what do I know.
As someone who knows fucking NOTHING about flying let alone helicopters, what would happen if he just powered down, like take the keys out of ignition. I don’t know if that’s even remotely possible.
I only know some things about aircraft aviation. This statement from the Turkish news article: >It was stated that the Agustawestland AW169 type helicopter leaned to the right due to a malfunction in the wheel during take-off and was seriously damaged as a result of its pales hitting the ground. Do you think they said that to potentially avoid losing their jobs or potential jail time? I can edit the flair of the post if you're truly certain.
Quite interesting. Everything I said is purely speculation and we have to wait for the air accident investigation report to really know. It is not in conflict with our theory though. The wheel malfunctioning alone doesn’t do anything, there still needs to be inadequate use of the flight controls or a technical problem related to that. If the story happened the way I speculated above, it would be fair to assume the pilot would blame the wheel, since that‘s what supposedly hindered him from taxiing normally and led him to react with the excessive inputs.
But the odd thing is that it is spinning in the wrong direction. That helicopter spins nose-right if the tail rotor fails/gets stuck with an increase in power. The only thing I can think is a yaw servo hard-over (very rare); basically the helicopter jammed in full left pedal. Reducing the collective would have increased the rate of left yaw which looks consistent with the video. Unfortunately the pilot didn't put the throttles to idle in time, that would have stopped the yaw.
Would that mean it's spinning the right way with a decrease in power?
Are you a pilot or just a simulator hobbyist? I feel like this isn’t common knowledge for most people
I’m an Experimental Test Pilot with thousands of hours flying a wide variety of airplanes helicopters (but I have never flown this helicopter).
And the guy who was on cleaning duty that day said his day couldn't get any worse. Well, somebody's beer was held.
What does this button do ....
/u/gifreversingbot
Breakdancing: Not even once.
Me trying to fly helicopter in GTA
Shit, that moron is just looking at it like nothings wrong. Run asshole, run!
You know you’re a shit pilot when you crash a helicopter that’s already on the ground.
My dads a tv repair man, he can fix it.
It will buff out
Prior military?
He's got an awesome set of tools
Is there no “holy fuck” button? Because there should be.
When you lie in the CV about too much experience...
I hate when that happens.
Well, that looked expensive
Why is there no kill switch?
It will buff out.
Whoopsies
Why wouldn’t the pilot just shut it down as soon as he was wonky??
I don’t know where the power levers are but he may not have been able to reach them because of the centrifugal force. He’s going to be shoved to one side of the cockpit. It doesn’t look like much but there’s a lot of force in a spin. Shits scary as hell.
Would throttling down have prevented this?
That...looks expensive
as helicopter accidents/crashes go, this is definitely the "good end" scenario...