Kenny Keller critiques a Robinson R-44 crash/incident clip, identifying sloppy landing and pickup, chaotic ground handling, and a rushed takeoff (possible passenger interference). He contrasts that with safer ride operations flown by Chris Hauser—methodical hover pre-takeoff checks, roped-off passenger areas, crew escorts, and deliberate briefings—and emphasizes that safer procedures both protect people and are compatible with profitable ride operations. The video closes with links to Keller's Helicopter Land Ground School courses.
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Day 268, another crash video. And we're gonna go right into this one. I'm gonna not hesitate to tell you what I really think on this one. This one's pretty obvious. And then I'm gonna give you an idea of what it could like and what may have prevented this. So let's check this out. Right from the guy's landing, okay. Comes in kind of twisting as he comes down. That was looked a little sloppy, right? He didn't just come in, stop and sit down. Now watch the chaos here. We don't know who is who. All of a sudden, okay, this guy, apparently he's working with the helicopter. But here you got a guy going out, and you got this guy and that guy and people walking back this way. And that guy's exiting back there. Looks like chaos, right? People everywhere. That's my first clue to, you know, not a real protected operation there. Somebody could have easily walked into that tail rotor. Guy's over there talking to him. Shuts the door. Now pay attention to the takeoff. And I'm hammering on the hover pre takeoff checks. Watch this. Boom. And away it goes. Now, I know it probably might be that a passenger kicked the controls. I don't know what exactly went on there, but was that pickup sloppy? Yes. Was it rushed? Yes. Boom. And away they went. What if he would have pulled up? Well, number one, let's back up. I think it was kind of chaotic to start with, right? So let's take a look at that again real quick. Just specifically the pickup. Twisting as you're coming off the ground. That makes no sense. And again, I remember some discussion in this video and people said that maybe one of the passengers got into the controls. But anyway, it's just plain freaking sloppy to start with. I mean, it just like you can just tell something bad is going to happen. Okay, so now I'm going to take you to a video that I filmed. This was Chris Hauser, that many of you know from our videos did his private commercial CFI with me. He's been a guest instructor within helicopter Lane ground school. He used to come and do live training Tuesdays with us. Recently did an interview with him during coffee with Kenny. So I kind of helped him a little bit when the owner wanted to do rides and he hired Chris to fly them. And that weekend was a holiday weekend, so I wanted to be with my daughter. So Chris worked with the owner of the aircraft. And I'm going to show you what they did over in the background to keep people safe and keep People back. But let's just take a look at Chris's takeoff, for example. He's got passengers in there, all right, up to a nice hover. Okay, you got time for pre takeoff check, kind of look over everything. Nice slow turn. He's going to move, get over to get to a certain area to get ready to do his takeoff. So there you go. Slow, smooth, methodical. Okay, he's had time to check everything. Gently pulling the power and away he goes. He's got plenty of open space there. There's an opening in the tree line over here where he's going to go out. That looks pretty good. That's the way it should look. Now let's go look at what they're doing with all the passengers and people. Just play a little bit of that shot. That's pretty cool. As the evening went on. Okay, so here's a little bit of an idea of how things should look over here. They've got things roped off, there's a fence, they got two yellow lines. And this may seem like overkill, but they had enough people, right? So they've got people marked in orange. So you know, who's the crew, who the passengers are. You got cones there to keep people back. So you escort the people over, you help them get in. Chris can focus on talking to them, you know, explaining to them, you know, a quick, a quick briefing about what they shouldn't, should and should not do during the flight. So now he's all loaded up, so he's got time to talk to everybody, make sure everybody's good, make sure everybody's got their headsets on. Making sure everybody's good to go. And Chris is, you know, he's a neat guy, right? Everybody likes talking to him. So look at the time he took to talk to everybody, take a look at everything, make everything is good to go. He took plenty of time getting ready to go. Oh, anyway, it was a nice pickup. Now here's he's got a heavier load on this one, but he's taking his time moving over, making sure everything's good to go. That's what it should look like. And I know when people are rushing to make money, it's all about making money. But you know what? You're not making any money when you crash the frickin helicopter and destroy it and kill people. Nice smooth takeoff. There he goes. No barriers. Looking good. Alright, let's critique Chris's landing. Nice and slow, keeping the nose straight. Coming down, coming down. Look at, look at the time he's taking to make sure he's going to set down nice and straight and boom, here's another shot of you know, you know who the crew members are escorting the three people back safely away from the helicopter. I think we might get one more shot of what they have set up over there. So away he goes to this next bunch and the next shot is back over here. So you see the cars have to stay behind the fence. Vehicles over there are crew members. There's only one way in and one way out. People clearly know where they're supposed to be standing while they're waiting for their helicopter ride. Over here you can see where everybody's parking. It's keeping everybody behind the fence, keeping them back from, you know, the takeoff and landing area. All right, there were some really neat shots from that night. So I just want to leave you with the note of this one. Again back to the hover pre takeoff check. But in that video you saw how the guy landed. Twisting, setting down, then everything's chaotic as they're getting ready to fly. There really is no time for any kind of a briefing or the pilot's to talk to anybody or do anything. Yanks the thing twists up off the ground and away he goes. That's just not the way to do it. Never has been, never will be. And I like the examples we gave you of Kris and I guess we will say oh that's overkill, you know. Well they did it and Kris talked about how they made really good money that weekend. So the argument of oh well we don't have time for that. I'm not so sure about that. I'm really not. Alright. I'm Kenny Keller, creator Helicopter Land Ground School. You can go down below and check out our four courses Private commercial instrument, cfi. They're all down below. The video in the box below helicopterground.com youm can go there, take out our training for a 24 hour test flight. Check it out. Any questions, let us know. 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