Missing Coast Guard Helicopter

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 deise316 wrote:

An aircorps rescue helicopter crashed in Tramore bay in 1999, resulting in the loss of 4 lives, another extremely sad occasion as the crew were only starting day 2 of an entire new rescue service based at Waterford airport. 
There was a report into the crash, and basically what happened in that situation was there was particularly bad fog that night at the airport, visiblity was practically zero, and as the report later found, the airport wasn't ideally equipped with either the relevant personnel or instruments/equipment required in such a situation. Running low on fuel and after a few aborted landing attempts, the pilots made the decision to land on nearby Tramore beach. They clipped a high sand dune while flying low & looking for a suitable landing spot, the helicopter exploded on impact resulting in the loss of 4 lives. 

It was the first thing I thought of on Monday last when I heard about this one, I'm only 3 miles away from the airport and Rescue 117 frequently flies (low) over my parents house on its missions. The journal.ie reports debris on the actual island, but also states there is no significant impact damage on the island. Language is very important in these reports, and reading it, the first thing that struck me was the use of the word significant, ie, he didn't say there was no impact damage. 

Mechanical failure is always, always the first thing mentioned in any aircraft crash, it rarely turns out to be the case. If there were a significant safety issue, Sikorsky would have grounded all their helicopters, they didn't. That too tells something of a story. The black box signals are coming from 40-60 metres away from the island, according to reports. If what Peter's link above says is true, it looks like a not too dissimilar incident to the one in 1999. There was no mayday call there either. 

I have no idea as to the reasons for it, but anyone even on here who lives near where one of these rescue helicopters is based will confirm they seem to fly incredibly low at the best of times. The island/lighthouse is 180 metres above sea level. It looks like a desperately unlucky & tragic accident, but adding it all up, tis difficult not to come to the conclusion that they flew into something they didn't see or know was there in the first place. 

If it did indeed suffer sudden mechanical failure, the odds on bits of the helicopter impacting on the only tiny piece of land around for about 20 square miles, and not the surrounding water, must be ridiculously high. 

Very good post Deise I was only reading about the Tramore crash earlier. Seems like a balls up with the airport not having anyone there out of hours for ATC which seems crazy in this day and age. Reading on about the Mayo crash on that forum is very enlightening despite the forum's name. It's essentially filled with pilots from both types of aircraft and plenty of them from the UK and Norway even remember meeting one or the other from the crew. The knowledge imparted there is truly excellent and gives a much broader understanding of what might have happened, certainly much more so than any sh!te in the media or the inevitable report. Aer Corp reduced staff might be a red herring, ultimately aside from talking on the radio, if something goes wrong another helicopter can actually help out as opposed to a fixed wing aircraft. 

Likely to have been multiple factors:

- the cloud ceiling changed from 500 ft to about 200 ft in the hour or so after the crash

- 116 refers to the base rather than the helicopter. It may be that the helicopter they used had automated flight location info for say the Waterford region and switched around for maintenance ect and reassigned to Dublin, therefore Blacksod and Black Rock may have been confused if neither was already inputted before then.

- flying at the speed they would have been descending to land, radar and terrain identification systems can suffer from misleading data. One North Sea oil rig pilot mentions how he nearly sh*t himself when he saw the rig go by his window when he should have been another hundred or so feet higher according to his radar. 

- While preparing from landing, maps would have been zoomed closed, both Blacksod bay and Black Rock would have looked identical (coast, a lighthouse, sea) The main difference being one is 300 ft above sea level and the other near sea level. 

Also: the CPI (Crash Position Indicator) didn't do it's job (as per usual supposedly)

Edited by Peter Stöger - 18 Mar 2017 at 11:43pm