Helicopter Crashes, Why, What Happened?

They took off after having briefed who will be number 1, 2 and number three in the loose formation. The flight was planned back to the Gauteng area.

After take-off, number one said he wanted to show the other two something on the ground and turned towards the "site".


During the low level "site flypast" number one collided with a telephone wire, him crashing and burning about a kilometre further after having lost the battle for control of the damaged aircraft.

They took off in a Helicopter. Desperate to get back to Gauteng and other commitments. He entered into IMC, and fortunately escaped unharmed after a few 360 degree IMC turns, only observed afterwards on the GPS tracks, realising that the AH and DI did not work as advertised.

He took off to reposition the aircraft to another area not far from the departure aerodrome. On the way there, he experienced a total engine failure. He survived the crash.

A Helicopter collided with power lines. The company SOP's clearly state that the pilot must refrain from flying at an altitude that may put the training helicopter and its occupants at risk.

What do all these crashes have in common? Surely these pilots did not plan to crash on the way to their destination.

Why this and why that? Why did he not do this? Why did he fly so low that he collided with wires? How come she did that? And in the back of our minds, not daring to say it out loud, "I Will never do that!!!" I am not so stupid to do that!!! He/she was such a good pilot!!! Are always the words proclaimed by family and a friend after such fellow aviator was killed in an aircraft crash.

Why do pilots do things they shouldn’t do? I am not a shrink, therefore I am not 'eau fait' with the workings of the brain regarding ad-hoc decision making.

What I do know is that in the airline environment, you cannot summarily do something that you should not do. There are various reasons for that, firstly, you normally have another pilot watching over you and eyeing your command seat should you stuff it up. Secondly, there will hopefully be passengers on board that will tell, if they survive your antics, what you did and how they almost got killed. Thirdly, you normally have cabin crew in the back that is very observant should you stuff it up.

Then you have the CVR and the FDR and nowadays you have sophisticated equipment watching over your every move and recording the entire flight. For example, should you deviate on final approach by not being in the slot at 500', it will notify the Chief Helicopter Training Captain and you will be on the red carpet explaining why you should not be fired for non-compliance of the company's SOP's. These are a few reasons why the airline environment is a much safer environment that the General Aviation environment.

These rules in the airline environment should point us in the right general direction as to what we, as General Aviation Pilots can do to up our game and not be one of the many statistics at each New Years statistics briefing by the SACAA
Source: http://www.atsheli.co.za/news/wes/crashes-why.html