www.stuff.co.nz/national/6167341/Chopper-crash-pilot-wants-answers
Check out the guy that brings this chopper down! What a d!ck
The agreed plan sounded pretty dodgy anyway, regardless of any subsequent mistakes
"...he could not get the helicopter low enough to the ground to unclip the rope and decided to instead hover above the tower for someone to unclip him from there..."
Who thinks it's a good idea to go underneath a hovering helicopter and unclip him??!
Yeah, I reckon I would have opted for a longer lifting line than 5m longer than the tower. A little more unwieldy in the lifting, but a whole lot easier to land and unclip from the chopper. PPPPP
Whoever devised and wrote that procedure/documentation etc is a straight up idiot, what they were doing was just stupid. Sure, the dude had a massive brain fade but the point of SWMS's etc is that you should never be able to get even close to having an incident like that no matter how retarded you are. Hopefully the person who actually wrote the procedure gets bent over rather than the idiot who just happened to be a bit keen to make business happen.
I'm surprised they didn't have a quick release in the chopper. He could then have just dropped the cable when he found it was too short.
You never know when the motor might decide to go part time or some other emergency, such as what happened here and a quick release can save your bacon. Not to mention a million dollar helicopter.
I can understand how the guy grabbed the cable. It was a really dumb thing in retrospect but it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. He was setting up to unclip it so having it in his hand could be seen as a first step.
Was he trying to secure the Chopper and stop it from moving.. Bet he wont be doing that again !I lift heavy **** and the best thing to do it to let it go (when it is swaying and..NEVER STAND / WORK UNDER THE PATH OF A OBJECT BEING LIFTED>)
^^^ Agree with you Busta, I thought that there was a minimum distance you could stand to hovering chopper? Definitely not under it?! Big heads will roll I expect. The pleb (supervisor) will get a severe talking to, maybe suspension & re-education on safety & rigging procedures. Now if he was the one that wrote the safety procedure...then he's in for a world of hurt.
Yeah such a sketchy plan huh! Everyone in that vid is soooooo lucky not to be chopped into bite sized chunks
Ok, tethering the helicopter to something seems risky, but then to fly below the object it is tethered to, seems really dumb and risky. The benefit of hindsight I guess...
