Boat crew member killed by undercarriage

[Variable Load]

A man was killed on Wednesday after being hit by a helicopter while aboard a boat in waters off the East Kalimantan city of Balikpapan.

Syamsuddin, 23, died after the helicopter’s landing gear struck him on the head, while another boat passenger, Nana Setiana, 56, was badly injured in the accident. The boat was transporting eight people and the helicopter reportedly carried four people, none of whom was injured.

The head of management at Balikpapan’s Sepinggan International Airport, Rustino, said the helicopter was flying at a low altitude prior to striking the speedboat.

It took off from Sepinggan at 3 p.m. on Wednesday for an autopilot test flight, destined for a village in the neighboring district of Paser, but the aircraft headed back to the airport midway due to bad weather.

“The pilot admitted to flying low; he didn’t see the speedboat passing below because it was foggy,” Rustino told local news portal kaltimpost.co.id.

“But then they realized they hit something. The helicopter flew in a circle before it resumed its trip back to the airport,” he added.

The pilot has been identified as Willy Baker, while the three passengers on board the helicopter were mechanics.

link

Wow

[Non-PC Plod]

There is low flying, and there is taking the p**s! Tragically for the boat passengers, this falls into the latter category.

[HeliHenri]

"The pilot admitted to flying low"

At least, the pilot is an honest man , thanks to him, the inquiry will go faster because he could have said "well, don't remember exactly but I think that I was flying at about 300 ft"

Less than 6 ft is " flying low", so what is flying very low for him ? Taxiing ?!!!

Test flight, 3 spectators on board, test aborted so free to choose the type of flight for the return : very low flight, low visibility but hight level of testosterone ...
.

[tottigol]

Jail time.

[topendtorque]

This reminds me of a similar incident.

The late Spud Murphy then a Stock Inspector in Western Australia and part time musterer with his fixed wing. Spud had a couple of funny escapades, the most noteworthy being when with his inherent Irish demeanor, one day lost it when trying to get a 'recalcitrant' (well in spud's view anyway) ground based horsemen to follow directions.

Spud's method to gain attention was a very low and fast beat up - there was a bang - spud had hit the horse on the head with his nose wheel and killed it stone dead. The miracle is he completely missed all other stock men and horses.

Spud calls up on the two-way after he has cooled down somewhat and says, "Think I hit the nose wheel, how does it look?"

By this time several horseman are gathered around the dead horse and one of whom is holding the nose wheel in his hand with his two-way in the other.. He replies "It looks OK to me!"

Vale Spud, many will remember, poor bugger was the first Aussie R22 blade failure - from about 150 feet,

[Thomas coupling]

I recall working with another SeaKing pilot in the early 80's who was on exercise in Saudi He was one of a three ship formation flying low over a land exercise. They came up over a sand bank low and slow and he clipped the top of a military landrover which was in a convoy. Problem was that there was a saudi officer standing up in it and he was decapitated. The Saudi's didn't pursue it Simply put it down to attrition.

[Reefdog]

Vale Spud, many will remember, poor bugger was the first Aussie R22 blade failure - from about 150 feet

I remember this and Spud murphy

Seem to remember the blade had 5000+++ hours on it

[topendtorque]

Seem to remember the blade had 5000+++ hours on it

Those discussions abounded as they do.

The official inquiry after lots of difficult sleuthing established a small margin of less than a couple of hundred from memory. (120????)

The finding made the point had the blade been changed on time it would not have happened.
Don't overlook the banality of that statement; it is like having passengers on air work, where they have no right to be, would never be hurt if they were not there during an accident. In fact their extra weight may often contributes to the very accident.

It would be inappropriate of me to allow an assumption these sorts of components will go go for more than two and a half times their list life (then 2,000) before failure, which I would by not disagreeing with your assumption. (That those dash number blades are not in service anywhere now is not a shield to hide behind)

It was also fairly widely known at the time that Spud was most way through a 2,000 hourly replacement and was "just doing a few more hours to get the dollars to buy the blades."

I also found later, from a pilot of his employ, that Spud used high power always in cruise and when doing his tourist flights from one particular location used to employ a harsh method to get out of the confined space he was working in.
However, in his defense it's also very fair to say he didn't come up through the big company mentor system where good operating practices are hammered into pilots.

Several colleagues of mine and I researched the 5,000 hour claim. We used a simple premise. First we used the average of the hours we (more experienced and thus higher per year time pilots) were all doing and multiplied it by the calender age of the helicopter, then tried to verify if he was doing more hours than the rest of us.

We could not possibly come up with anything like 5,000 hours. We don't at all dispute that the hours were over, but from that I would pass on very cold comfort to anyone reading this who thinks it's OK to overfly time life limits.

cheers tet

[P6 Driver]

"The pilot admitted to flying low; he didn’t see the speedboat passing below
because it was foggy,”

From that snippet, I wonder what forward visibility and horizon the pilot had and what speed was involved with both the vessel and the aircraft.

An alternative (and pure speculation, of course) is that the helicopter could have been "buzzing" the boat.

Not good, either way.

[Agaricus bisporus]

1) Speedboats seldom go out in foggy weather
2) Fog so thick it forces a helo to fly at below 6 feet would make it impossible for a speedboat to operate.
3) Hard to think of fog so thick you'd want or need to fly at 6ft over water.
4) An airtest in fog that thick? An airtest in fog at all?
5) "Ahem. M'lud my client informs me he believed the boat to be one owned by an acquaintance of his known as foggy..."

I don't think the best lawyer in the land is going to help that fella much.

[alouette]

Rumour has it that the victim was hit with about 50 knots...

[Thomas coupling]

I thought he was hit with the skids?

[topendtorque]

If the driver doesn't get the skids put under him,
we'll all be in knots.