[Peetwo]

Sea World midair update: 5/01/22

Unbelievable footage here, via Channel 7 news:

 

Next via the Oz:

Questions over Gold Coast helicopter crash pilot’s view

By JAMIE WALKER
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
@JamieWalkerOz and CHARLIE PEEL RURAL REPORTER @charliepeeled and MACKENZIE SCOTT REPORTER @MackenzieJScott
12:18PM JANUARY 4, 2023


Sea World Helicopters chief pilot Ash Jenkinson.

Crash investigators will consider whether the veteran pilot killed with three people in a mid-air helicopter collision at the Gold Coast had his view obstructed by passengers seated next to him.

The configuration of the downed $2.4m Eurocopter EC130 put Sea World Helicopters chief pilot Ash Jenkinson on the left of the cockpit, with the two people strapped in beside him potentially limiting his ability to see the oncoming chopper.

As Australian Transport Safety Bureau experts continued to comb the crash scene on Tuesday, the tragedy reached across the globe with the naming of the other victims as holidaying British couple Ron and Diane Hughes, aged 65 and 57 respectively, and Sydney woman Vanessa Tadros, 36, whose 10-year-old son, Nicholas, was critically injured.

The boy underwent his fourth round of surgery while the remaining passengers in Mr Jenkinson’s aircraft, Winnie De Silva, 33, of Geelong, and her son Leon, 9, were in a serious but stable condition.

The pilot and five passengers in the second Sea World helicopter escaped with minor injuries after the crippled machine was landed safely.

ATSB chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said the death toll would have been “far worse” had it not been for the skill of surviving pilot Michael James, who put the crippled chopper down on a sandbank in the Southport Broadwater, metres from the crushed wreckage of the other aircraft. It too was an EC130.

Mr Mitchell said the ATSB would pursue multiple lines of ­inquiry, including the weather, tasking of flights, how long the two helicopters had been operating on Monday and the time the pilots had spent at the controls.


Pilot Michael James walks away from, the wreckage.

“We have a reasonable understanding of what the two helicopters were doing … in those critical phases of flight,” he said. “But exactly why this occurred, what was the range of visibility from both the pilots, what was happening in the cabins at the time – they’re the things that will help us piece together potentially what may have been a contributing factor here.”

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said an open mind would be maintained on criminal charges, though it was early days in the investigation.

“All of the evidence will form part of the investigation and at the end of the day, there will be conclusions … and that (charges) may be the case,” she said.

The collision happened within 20 seconds of Mr Jenkinson lifting off one of the northernmost of three Sea World helipads on the Broadwater in sunny and near-cloudless conditions about 2pm with all six passenger seats filled.

The main rotor was torn off when the chopper struck the front left underside of the descending one, causing Mr Jenkinson’s aircraft to plummet to earth. Mr Mitchell said the altitude at which the crash happened was yet to be ­established but it would have been more than 200m.

With mechanical failure or the weather unlikely to have been ­involved, crash investigators would examine Sea World Helicopter’s procedures, communication lines between the pilots and factors that could have impeded their performance in the critical moments leading up to the head-on collision, aviation experts said.

Ron Bartsch of Avlaw Aviation Consulting and a director of ­regional carrier Rex Airlines said the cabin seating configuration would likely be looked into.

In the EC130, the “pilot is located in the left-hand seat and there is availability of two passengers to sit adjacent to that pilot,” he told the ABC. “So … that may have been a consideration in terms of what happened.”



Other factors such as potential pilot fatigue and workload would also form part of the investigation, aviation sources said. Civil Aviation and Safety Authority records show that in addition to the single-engined EC130s, Sea World Helicopters also operated two AS350 Squirrel helicopters.

In a 2021 interview with a blog published by aviation company Spidertracks, which makes a GPS locating system used by Sea World Helicopters, Mr Jenkinson, 40, indicated that the joy flight service often carried 600 passengers a day pre-Covid.

Assuming all four choppers were in the air on Monday, the height of the Christmas-New Year tourism peak on the Gold Coast, each machine would have made a minimum of three flights an hour on that basis. Tickets started at $69 a person for the popular family package of up to four adults and three children to take a five-minute sightseeing flight.

The volume of the traffic over the Broadwater had angered some residents, with the Main Beach ­Association campaigning for helicopters from Sea World to be redirected away from apartment buildings and parks.

CASA, however, was not aware of any change to flight routes in the unregulated airspace around the famed resort and theme park operated by the Village Roadshow group. “Helicopters flying under visual flight rules in non-controlled airspace are authorised to determine their own flight routes,” a spokeswoman for the regulator said.

Writing on the professional ­pilots’ blog PPRuNE on Tuesday, a correspondent claiming to be “on that part of the water frequently” said operations seemed to be “orderly and safe” on any given day.

“Tragically, what may have happened is a deadly cocktail of commercial pressure, complacency and long days of flying,” the person said. “Keep in mind this would have been one of the busiest days ever for this operation coming out of Covid with a 100 per cent fleet increase.

“The challenge was to get through as many flights in a day. The descending helicopter would have had the departing one on the left below it, thus obscured. The ­departing one likely would have been able to see the other one on his right and above, but with no ‘relative motion’ likely would not have been picked up in his peripheral vision.

“These guys do this dozens of times an hour so radio calls are likely to be perfunctory as all pilots expect they know what the others are doing. Throw in complacency from doing the job repeatedly day in day out and it’s a very tragic outcome.”

Sea World Helicopters did not respond to questions.

MTF...P2