Interesting helicopter footage

[tor lives]

Hi guys,
I am just preparing a training package for one of our rotary wing clients, and during my research I came across this.
I thought you guys would find this footage interesting, (if not a little scary).
Take special note of what happens to the aircraft door in flight, and where the poor old helicopter driver ends up
You just know this is not going to end well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5aMT9MBfZI

Moral of the story......choppers are a health hazard
TOR

[BradG]

For a second I thought the chopper or the pilot was the issue, but if you look closely the moron on the ground grabs the wire and pulls it, without enough slack he pulls it straight into the blades.

Second moral of the story.....idiot co-workers can get you killed.

[F-27pax]

I read an academic paper recently about stupidity. The summary - there's a lot of it around, more than you think. The second point was that an attack of the stupids can happen to anyone. Of all the industries on this good earth aviation does more than most to keep stupidity within limits, and then it just comes out and bites people. The thing with aviation is that it a dangerous business and we see what a moment of stupidity can do to people and the machines they fly in. It could have been a lot worse ...

Leigh

[Adam the Akrodude]

That was one angry palm tree in a hurricane! 10,000 parts going in different directions - I dunno!

Many years ago when my family lived for a period in Borneo, my father was flown back and forth between two coastal towns once a week in a big Puma - run my Bristow. Bristow had two on these in service at the time mainly ferrying oil & gas personnel between the towns of Kuala Belait and Miri. Well, one of the Puma's suffered a in-flight failure of one of the doors. It blew off in flight right up into the main rotor and the Puma crashed inverted into the jungle. It took the Gurkha's three days to get to the wreckage. Not sure if any cause was found for the door blowing off. They are fitted with explosive bolts that fire in a emergency. It was a pretty awful event at the time. Luckily neither my father nor anyone we knew was on that chopper.

Shell also lost a S-61 used for crew transfer out to the rigs. One had been "blessed" by a local witch doctor and the other hadn't. The one that crash of course was the one that hadn't had chicken blood thrown on it. It was the "Wild West" back then.

[hrtpaul]

PNG still is the wild west mate. This work (installing towers) is what the 2 Bell 407's I look after will be doing next week on New Britain. Our chopper pilots I have flown with up there are second to none but no matter how good you are, some deadshit on the ground can still ruin you day. I was watching them sling drums of diesel on my first tour and it was very impressive to watch. And they were doing this at 9500' AMSL which in a chopper is no mean feet. It's amazing how much even the smallest thing like dirty rotor blades can significantly degrade perfomance. Here's a pic that pretty much sums up helicopters