Aviation Law Monitor : Aviation Lawyer & Attorney : Michael Danko Law Firm : California Airplane & Helicopter Crashes : Aviation Law Monitor

The NTSB says that during tomorrow’s hearing, it will be looking to industry leaders to give it a “deeper understanding of regulations” bearing on the operation of the nation’s air shows. Of course, the only regulatory body that has the authority to control air shows is the FAA. But what the Board will find -- if it asks the right questions -- is that for the most part, the industry regulates itself. According to one veteran air racer, Howie Keefe, the FAA is more or less “hands off” when it comes to air show safety. From Martha Bellisle’s article in the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Keefe said the industry is largely self-regulated because the pilots and engineers are the most qualified to determine whether another pilot can handle a certain race or course or whether a certain design can handle the stress of a trick or race. ‘The classes themselves can say yes or no to a person who wants to race — if they can’t do a roll, they can’t race,’ Keefe said. ‘The FAA can’t do that. We rely on the expertise of the people in the industry to make the decisions.’

Perhaps a “hands off” policy is fine for the participants. But not so much for the spectators, who expect that if the FAA approves an event, it is overseeing the event’s safety in some meaningful fashion, and not merely turning the reins over to the event sponsors.

This Board says that the purpose of tomorrow’s public hearing is to help it investigate future air show accidents. But this Board is more assertive than past boards. There’s little doubt that it will find the FAA’s oversight lacking. The question is whether it will do anything about it.

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Some say that Cirrus aircraft are improperly designed because they tend to catch fire on impact more frequently than other aircraft, such as those manufactured by Cirrus competitors, like Diamond or Cessna. And there are plenty of examples of post-crash Cirrus fires to talk about. Critics argue that those fires prove that the aircraft is unduly dangerous and defective.

An aircraft should be designed such that no one is burned to death in an otherwise survivable accident. At least, that’s the design standard in the auto industry. It became the standard when, during the 1970's, Bell Helicopters showed that some simple engineering enhancements could virtually eliminate post-crash fires in survivable Huey helicopter accidents.  That technology has been around now for 40 years. The technology works in helicopters and cars, so there’s no reason for a properly designed, modern airplanes to catch fire either.

But the key is that the crash must be otherwise survivable. If the crash is not otherwise survivable, the post-crash fire is irrelevant to the fate of the occupants. To date, the Cirrus fires that critics point to (like this one, and this one) were accidents that likely would have been fatal regardless of whether there was a post crash fire. So from those accidents, no conclusions about the fuel system's safety can be drawn.

But this morning, everything changed. A Cirrus crashed in Phoenix while on approach to land at Scottsdale Airport.  Both the pilot and the passenger survived the impact. But then a fire broke out.  The fire killed one occupant and badly burned the other.   

Unlike other Cirrus crashes, the Scottsdale crash was undeniably survivable. The post - crash fire raises legitimate questions about whether the Cirrus fuel system is as crashworthy as it should be.

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Eurocopter's AStar is the most popular tour helicopter in the United States. But according to some tour operators, the helicopter is dangerous and defective. They use it anyway because it is the most profitable.

No, I’m not making this up.

Problems with the AStar 350?

One of Las Vegas' largest tour operators, Heli-USA, is run by Nigel Turner.  Turner is himself a pilot. He operates the largest AStar fleet in the Western United States. And he feels that the design of the AStar's hydraulic sytem causes it to crash. Turner complains that the manufacturer refuses to fix the problems. But, like other tour operators he sticks with the AStar for one simple reason: money. According to a 2008 article in the Star Bulletin:
 

Turner said that despite the problems with the AStar, it will remain the helicopter of choice for his company because it's the only chopper with forward-facing seats that can fit enough passengers to make a tour profitable.

So what exactly do hydraulics and actuators do?

The actuators move the helicopter's rotor blades, allowing the pilot to control the flight of the aircraft. The AS350's hydraulics -- similar to a power steering system in a car -- help move the helicopter's actuators. If the hydraulic system fails, the pilot may find it hard to move the actuators and thus the helicopter can be difficult to control.
 

While a problem with the hydraulic system can make the helicopter difficult to control, a disconnected or broken actuator will make the helicopter impossible to control. That's what happened in 2007, when an AS350 just like the one involved in this accident crashed in Hawaii, killing four tourists. Days after that accident, Eurocopter issued a Special Airworthiness Bulletin (see below) prompted by two previous fatal accidents, warning of the consequences of loose servo control rod end fittings. 

The Sundance Helicpter’s control system

NTSB board member Dr. Mark Rosekind says that the Sundance helicopter climbed and turned erratically just before impact.  That's consistent with an actuator problem. And, just hours before the crash, one of the Sundance helicopter's main rotor actuators was replaced.  Was the actuator defective? Was it installed incorrectly?

The NTSB has now recovered that actuator from the wreckage site. That's where the investigation will focus. 

But given what industry leaders have to say about problems with the AStar’s control system, one has to wonder whether by continuing to use the helicopter the tour industry is simply placing profits ahead of public safety. 

AS350BService Bulletin

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“Investigators aren’t sure why Scruggs didn’t see the propeller” she walked into last night. 

Um, maybe because a spinning propeller is pretty much invisible? Especially at night?

News reports are that incidents such as Lauren Scruggs', who is a model and fashion blogger, are rare. Maybe, but it would depend on what one means by “rare.”  Seems that someone is killed or seriously injured by a spinning prop every year. Some reports of incidents from my local area alone are here and here.

During the day, spinning propellers have a mesmerizing effect. People have been known to see them, yet walk right into them. 

Of course, at night, propellers can be virtually invisible.

In almost all prop-strike cases, pilot error plays a role. A pilot needs to think carefully before allowing a passenger to deplane with the engine running. Here, apparently, the pilot allowed Scruggs to exit the aircraft with the engine running so that another passenger could take her seat. Certainly it would have been safer to shut down the engine of the Aviat Husky he was flying before allowing passengers to leave or approach the aircraft. “Hot loading” – allowing passengers to get into the aircraft with the engine running -- is safe only when the passengers have been carefully briefed on procedures.  Even then, it's best permitted only with the help of a trained spotter who walks one passenger away from the aircraft and then walks the next passenger in.

Here are some common guidelines for propeller safety:

• The aircraft engine should be shut down before boarding or deplaning passengers. This is the simplest method of avoiding accidents.

• Boarding or deplaning of passengers, with an engine running, should only be allowed under close supervision. The pilot in command should have knowledge that either the company or the airport operator has ground attendants fully trained in their specific duties to board or deplane passengers from an aircraft with an engine(s) running. The pilot should instruct passengers, before they exit an aircraft with an engine(s) running, the path to follow to avoid the propeller or rotor blades.

• When it is necessary to discharge a passenger from an aircraft on which an engine is running, never stop the aircraft with the propeller in the path of the passenger's route from the aircraft.

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Power lines can be virtually invisible from the air.  The trick to avoiding them is, paradoxically, not to try to find them.  Instead, the pilot should look for the towers from which they are strung.  Once the pilot has the towers in sight, he should choose one and fly directly over it, rather than between them.  By flying over one of the towers the pilot can be assured of avoiding the wires, since no wires are strung higher than the tower itself.  

In November 2009, a Piasecki helicopter struck high tension wires shortly after departing from Adelanto airport as it headed for an airshow in Riverside, California.  The helicopter crashed and burned, and all three aboard were killed.

We represented Colleen Goble, the widow of one of the pilots on board the helicopter.  Yesterday, a jury in San Bernardino county, California rendered a $10 million verdict in her favor against the estate of Joseph Pike, who was the other pilot in the helicopter and the helicopter’s owner.  The jury determined that Pike was the pilot in command at the time of the accident.

Pike, a well-known flight instructor with over 12,000 hours of flight time, trained his students to never fly between electrical towers.  Rather, he taught his student to pick one tower and fly over it.  On the day of the accident, however, Pike chose to “split the towers” and ended up in the wires.

Pike’s estate had argued that forensic evidence showed that Goble, not Pike, was at the controls.  Pike’s estate also argued that the lines’ owner, the city of Los Angeles, should have installed orange marker balls on the lines to make them visible. Pike’s estate had sued both Goble and the city of Los Angeles but dismissed both those claims shortly before trial.

Goble was a vintage helicopter buff. He worked for a medical technology company and held several patents.  His work had been featured on National Geographic Television and had been displayed in the Smithsonian.  He was 58.  The couple lived in Connecticut and had no children.

The name of the case is Goble v. Estate of Pike.  The judge was the Honorable Steve Malone.

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The NTSB blamed the pilot for the last Blue Hawaiian helicopter crash into the side of a mountain. The NTSB concluded that while flying near bad weather, the pilot inadvertently entered clouds, became disoriented, and lost control of the helicopter. According to the NTSB, the probable cause of the accident was:

The pilot's inadequate decision by which he continued visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Also causal was his failure to maintain terrain clearance resulting in a collision with mountainous terrain. A contributing factor was the low ceiling.

One need only look at the low clouds in the photo taken shortly after Thursday's Blue Hawaiian crash on Molokai to wonder if weather and pilot decision-making played a similar role in this latest crash. 

Hawaii’s micro-weather makes helicopter tours dangerous. We've written about it before here, and here.  Spoken about it too.  Yet, year after year, tour operators opt to collect the fares and fly when weather conditions dictate that they really should stay on the ground.

Did the pilot involved in Thursday's crash try to squeeze his Eurocopter between the weather and the terrain and lose control?  Time will tell whether this accident should be added to the list of crashes caused by "improper VFR."  But without significant changes in the industry, Hawaiian tourists will continue to lose their lives in completely avoidable weather-related helicopter accidents. 

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It looks as though it was the twin-engine Seminole that caused the mid-air collision between it and a Beech Bonanza near Newberg, Oregon.  The crash killed the the 58-year old Bonanza pilot. The Oregonian quotes sources saying that:

the larger Piper PA-44 Seminole was executing training maneuvers in the area, making a series of rapid ascents and descents shortly after 4 p.m., when it came down upon a Beech Bonanza V35. . . [cutting it in two].

The Seminole (N3062H) was owned by Hillsboro Aviation, a flight school in Hillsboro, Oregon.  As it turns out, the crash was not the flight school's first.  In fact, in recent years the school has been plagued with training accidents. The most serious of those was in September, 2009, when both a Hillsboro Aviation flight instructor and his student were killed while training in a Robinson R22 helicopter. 

In addition to this week's fatal accident, and the one in 2009, Hillsboro Aviation aircraft have crashed in June 2008, June 2010, September 2010, and October 2010.

In August 2010, the FAA indicated its intent to fine Hillsboro Aviation $580,000 for numerous safety violations, including improper maintenance of its aircraft. Though the FAA investigation looked into the September 2009 fatal helicopter crash, the FAA ultimately decided to levy the fine for violations unrelated to that crash -- specifically for what it found to be Hillsboro's intentional falsification of various aircraft maintenance records.

Of course, Tuesday's crash may be entirely unrelated to the previous Hillsboro Aviation training crashes and the conduct for which the FAA cited the flight school.  Nonetheless, the school's safety record is abysmal.

Yet, Hillsboro Aviation remains in operation.

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The NTSB is underfunded and understaffed. So it investigates accidents using the "party system."  That means the NTSB relies on those who may have caused the accident for help in investigating the accident's cause. Unfortunately, the "party participants" seldom point the NTSB towards evidence in their files that would tend to incriminate them. As a result, NTSB reports go easy on the industry players.

From time to time, I've offered examples of cases (like the ones here and here) where the real cause of the accident was found by plaintiffs lawyers -- sometimes well after the NTSB report is published.

Here’s yet another example, this time arising out of the crash of the Continental (Colgan) Flight 3407. According to a recent CBS News report, lawyers for the families uncovered emails showing that Colgan Air knew the captain was not qualified to fly the Q400, but put him in the left seat anyway.   

According to an ABC report, in one of the emails a Colgan Vice President states that the captain

had a problem upgrading” and, taking that into consideration, “anyone that does not meet the [minimums] and had problems in training before is not ready to tackle the Q.”

The “Q” is a reference to the Bombardier Q400. Despite Colgan's concerns about the captain's ability to fly the Q400, they promoted him anyway.  Just five months after that, the new Q pilot crashed his aircraft in Buffalo, killing 50.

This wasn't merely a case of "pilot error," it was the result of an airline that didn't take safety seriously enough. The newly released emails are critical to understanding why the accident happened, and how similar accidents can be avoided in the future. Yet, an NTSB spokesman confirmed that Continental did not provide these emails to the NTSB at any time during its year long investigation of the crash.

It looks like the company's emails tell the story of why Continental Flight 3407 crashed.  And it was the plaintiffs' lawyers, not the NTSB, who found them. 

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Philip, South Dakota is the site of the second fatal Robinson R66 crash. This time, only the pilot was on board the helicopter.  The first fatal R66 crash, which happened in July, killed two. 

How does the R66 safety record stack up so far? 

Since there are only 41 R66's on the US registry, the record stacks up poorly.  

Before the Robinson R66 came along, there were about 1.2 fatal turbine helicopter accidents for every 100,000 hours flown. For the R66 crashes to be in line with that norm, each of the 41 R66's in the fleet would need to have logged 4000 hours.  Since Robinson didn't start delivering the R66 until November 2010, that's virtually impossible.  More realistically, the average time on an R66 is less than 400 hours.  

Though not a scientific analysis, as of now it looks as though Robinson's R66 is about 10 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than other turbine helicopters.

Sure, this is a small sample.  Perhaps it's too soon to draw any conclusions.  But should R66 owners and pilots be concerned?

Of course they should.

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