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That was “superior use of luck”…
I would need a change of underwear and new seat covers… I’m happy the crew was able to recover and survive. Just ‘wow!’.
There’s only so much a chopper pilot can do that low to the ground. The vast majority of power lines don’t have red balls, even in the US. We lost the inventor of my helicopter, and nearly lost two other chopper-pilot friends, to unmarked powerlines over rivers. It ain’t the voltage that kills you.
Back in 2009 I lined up a FAASTeam talk at KTRM called “Wire Strike Prevention” with a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter pilot with 10,000-plus hours. I walked in thinking, “This is mainly a helicopter problem.” I walked out knowing it is a low-altitude problem, period.
Helicopters live in the wire world, so they get the reputation. But fixed wing does not get a free pass. Most of the time we are up high and away from it. The moment we drop down for real work or real reasons, we are in the same trap. Agricultural flying, pipeline patrol, banner towing, short strips, canyon sightseeing, low approaches, go-arounds. That is when the wire problem becomes ours.
A helicopter can slow way down, reposition, even stop and rethink. A fixed-wing airplane cannot. It has to keep flying, and it turns with a radius that eats up space fast. So when a wire shows up late, the airplane is usually committed. Yank and you are flirting with a stall. Be gentle and you may not clear it. Try to duck under and you may be trading one wire for the next, or a fence, or rising terrain.
That is the dilemma the LAPD pilot put in my head. Wires do not care what you fly. If you choose to work low, you treat wires like weather. You plan for them, you brief them, you look for poles and crossings, and if you do not have the picture, you climb and reset.
A true case of S.H.L.
Just a bit hard to tell for sure from the pics but don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say “fenestron ftw!” – thank god!
If that had been any model other than the Eurocopter with the shielded tail rotor, the outcome would probably have been disastrous.