I had a trip in a helicopter once along the beach down by littlehampton. The pilot said that if he cut the engine (which he did) we kept flying and only slowly decended and, he said, we could have landed safely but bumpy - fortunately he restarted the engine and we carried on. The reason being that the forward speed kept us up. If the bearing had failed after the helicopter had got up to speed in a straight line it would possibly have been ok if he could find somewhere to land - it was the fact that it had only just taken off and had no real forward speed that it came straight back down.
was a lack of or shoddy maintenance to blame ? .. surely no such thing as an 'accident' if pilot error is discounted, there is a reason why the helicopter failed
There was a reason. But no one failed to maintain it "correctly" or (knowingly) did anything wrong. The bearing should be checked (not necessarily replaced unless necessary) after 400 hours of flight.
This one gave out much sooner than that for unknown reasons. But no-one could be reasonably expected to predict that.
It was maintained to a legal standard. Sadly it seems that that standard will need to be revised. But it wasn't shoddy and it wasn't negligence.
Comments
This one gave out much sooner than that for unknown reasons. But no-one could be reasonably expected to predict that.
It was maintained to a legal standard. Sadly it seems that that standard will need to be revised. But it wasn't shoddy and it wasn't negligence.