Scariest.Helicopter.Ride.Evar.
This could have been a LOT worse.
Not-safe-for-work language.
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Existential angst, with airplanes!
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6 comments:
I couldn't figure out what had happened from watching the video (even though the camera pans over the damage to the hangar door). Here's the full NTSB narrative:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20040825X01288&ntsbno=CHI04LA212&akey=1
The hangar door was open, extending out 10 feet above everyone's heads. When the pilot climbs out from his initial hover, the rotor hits the door.
Here's the narrative as a link, since the text URL gets cut off:
NTSB report CHI04LA212
Thanks David, I was trying to find the narrative the first time I saw this vid but I couldn't read the tail number and I was too lazy to dig deeper.
Wow, blaming it on the kid is pretty low...really seems unlikely.
Reminds me of a dumb moment when I backed out of a garage and removed a mirror with the door frame. I'm sure the same familiarity was at work here albeit with far more serious consequences.
Yea,
He can blame a PX all he wants. Notice the NTSB wasnt' buying it?
That was a $400,000.00 mistake. Ouch.
-ps
Yikes.
I haven't followed the link yet, but I'm guessing that's not in any way repairable.
It's kind of bizarre how the passengers just walk off. It's almost as if they signed up for that kind of excitement, so now it's over so they're going for ice cream.
The language could have been a lot worse, too.
"Charlie" undoubtedly has suffered enough so so don't take this as a dig at him, but am I the only one who noticed that prior to liftoff he seems to have never looked around and cleared his flight path at all? Years ago I recall a flight instructor saying, "A stiff neck is better than a broken neck".
Regardless of what the pilot did/did not do, yet another example of how aircraft and fixed structures don't mix. More years ago than I'd care to mention, before I even had a license one of the "duties" I had as a line boy was to taxi as many of the FBO's training aircraft as I could finagle myself into over to one of several hangars where we would put them to bed for the night. I was taught how to taxi right up very close to the door frame of the building, even sticking the wing inside to make the "stuffing' easier. As a kid I thought it kewl, as I look back now I wonder what they instructors and owner could have been thinking.
One day an airline pilot who had rented one of our Cubs (yes it was that long ago) was one of the last aircraft back. I was waiting for him so I could put that airplane in and "bang up' that hangar. I stood by the door frame and marshaled him up close, just as I would have done it myself. Being possessed of infinitely better judgement than I, as well as far superior piloting skills, he stopped some distance back, in spite of my impatient gesturing, shut down and walked in to the office to pay for his rental and have a chat with the owner.
Later the owner shared with me that the pilot went in and complained about "that kid" being irresponsible and scary, and that something should be done about him, yada, yada, yada. The owner allowed to me later that, in retrospect he probably shouldn't have shown me how to taxi up quite the way he had shown me and that in the future "it might be better" not to show our customers our taxing/marshaling skills quite so obviously. Indeed.
That overhead door only stuck out a few feet from the hangar itself, so who ever tower the 'copter out to that ramp position, or perhaps landed it there on the last flight was certainly doing their best (intentionally I hope) to build the next pilot a trap. It sure did spring.
Walking a short distance is infinitely better than filling out accident reports and insurance claims. Not to mention what might have happened to the videographer's undershorts *smile*.
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