December 2011 Archives

Here's my second annual Accident as Art (AaA) exhibition.

Last year's definition of AaA still holds:

Painful as wrecked aeroplanes are to behold, there's an artform in the lines and curves that beset our fallen angels.

Below is the slideshow of 2011 accident pictures that I found artful in some way. Photos were pulled from US National Transportation Safety Board documents from prangs that occurred in 2011. No pilots were killed in the making of this slideshow - they all walked away.

Happy Holidays,

John Croft / AsTheCroftFlies 

Hey airline travelers, do your fellow humans a favour this holiday season (and any other time for that matter) by staying in your seats when the pilot, who's paid to do more than just sound professional on the intercomm, keeps that little overhead seatbelt fastened light illuminated.

To ignore the cute little lighted cartoon is to maybe suffer the fate of a plane load of passengers trying to get to Frankfurt out of Philadelphia on the night of 19 October. The US NTSB pubished its initial report on incident on 20 December.

US Airways Flight 702, a Boeing 767-2B7 (N253AY) was climbing through 22,600ft toward its cruise altitude that night when the aircraft came upon a few minutes of unexpected moderate turbulence.

The captain had announced when passing through 10,000ft that passengers could use their portable electronics, but he did not, according to pilots and flight attendants, say "feel free to move about the cabin". In fact, the seatbelt sign had remained lit.

Despite the warnings, as we all have seen too many times, at least one passenger got up to use the lavs and learn a hard lesson in physics. She broke her ankle quite badly in the turbulence.

Injuries to time and money for other passengers and the airline then followed.

The pilots and flight attendants reported the situation to virtual physicans at Medlink, through company dispatch. A physician who happened to be on board also helped. 

The consensus: Back to Philadelphia.

The pilot declared an emergency and returned to the airport to land overweight at 26,400lb, which led to a sink rate of 280fpm, which apparently is high.

The passenger was cared for by medical personnel at the airport.

Meanwhile, the two pilots, one international relief pilot and the flight attendant who cared for the injured passenger had to fill out a gob of paperwork while the aircraft had to receive an overweight landing inspection.

And then there were 200+ other passengers who didn't get to Frankfurt that night/morning.

Attached below are the reports the crew had to fill out. Makes for some good perusing.

So this holiday season, please show goodwill toward men by sitting your butt in your seat when the fasten seatbelt light is on! (please?)

I'm not exactly sure what motivates a helicopter crew to do what five members of the Canadian rescue forces at Base Comox on the western coast of the country did with an AgustaWestland AW101 "Comorant" nearly one year ago, but I'm sure one hiker is glad they did.

I'm also not sure how cost effective it is to use a large, three-engine helicopter to pick up one little hiker, but that's grist for the story mill some other time.

Regardless, a panel of judges from the Canadian forces and Canadian journalist cadre recently selected a 442 Squadron crew as the winner in AgustaWestland's annual Comorant Trophy for helicopter rescue based on a 23 December 2010 rescue. Canada has a fleet of 14 Cormorants.

Here's the setup: It's night time on 23 December and a 23yr-old hiker is stranded nearly one mile up in a narrow steep bowl in dense clouds on Hat Mountain in the Cypress Provincial Park in British Columbia. A winter storm is approaching. Rescue 907, an AW101 operated by the 442 Squadron, gets the call to perform a rescue, an has one chance to make the save ahead of the storm, which officials said would have left the man "stranded for days without the necessary provisions to survive".

Here's how AgustaWestland describes the rescue: "As the crew approached in their AW101 "Cormorant" helicopter, they were battered by the turbulence of 46mph wind gusts blowing straight down the mountain.

This forced the pilots to fight rapid power swings, causing significant rotor speed changes which made accurate control of the helicopter very difficult.

Using night vision gear, the search team were only able to make out a faint light, which they hoped was their rescue target."

"We reached the estimated location of the hiker by slowly flying up the side of the mountain," said the aircraft commander, Capt. Jean Leroux.  "We had to attempt multiple passes until the visibility was good enough for us to fly over the man's location." Each of these approaches pushed the helicopter with its three powerful engines to its limit. Normally, the 'maximum' speed or power required for missions in an AW101 Cormorant reached about 80%, but during this rescue, the power fluctuated up to 117%, giving constant warning alarms."

"Facing the high risk of an avalanche, the crew decided on a fast extraction with the search and rescue (SAR) technician remaining attached to the hoist. The flight engineer then directed the aircraft [to a position] about 23ft above the hiker with a vertical rock face just 5-10ft in front of the rotor blades. The flight engineer lowered the SAR tech who quickly hooked up the rescue subject and both men were hoisted on board. Throughout this procedure, the snow was being whipped around the helicopter enveloping it in a "snowball" drastically reducing the pilots' visibility."

"As they went to fly away, a thick layer of cloud moved in, making it impossible to backtrack the way they came in. With almost no visibility, the flight crew managed to extract the helicopter from the cliff confines relying only on instrumentation to show them the way out. The crew flew to Lyons Bay soccer field, where the man was transferred to a land ambulance to be taken to hospital for treatment for mild hypothermia."

Congrats to the crew for the gutsy dispatch, and better luck hiking to the hiker who was lucky enough to have an AW101 and able crew at the ready.