Kenny Keller (speaker) presents Day #19 of an online helicopter ground school focused on when to abort a flight due to weather or deteriorating conditions. He draws on five years of EMS experience at Omni Flight Helicopters (flying BK117 and EC135) and offers three practical, non-textbook rules: (1) if you find yourself slowing and descending away from comfortable flight parameters, consider turning back; (2) trust your gut if it tells you to abort; and (3) set personal minimums in advance and stick to them even if it causes inconvenience. The video includes footage from a flight and informal, candid remarks.
Questions this video answers
January 20, 2012.
Five years.
BK117 and EC135.
Chapters
Of the day 19. I'm gonna get right to the point on this one. This is all footage from a flight I did today. Going to get some maintenance, and what I want to hit is three things on aborting a helicopter flight. This is something we need to spend a bunch of more time on, but something real quick. I did five years working for Omni Flight Helicopters doing EMS flying, and that was awesome. Got to fly BK117 and EC135, and a ton of great experience. And I think one of the best things that I ever got from their training was the chief pilot, who was a former line pilot. Czech airman said, if you're flying along on an EMS flight and all of a sudden you find yourself descending and slowing down from where you want to be at to feel comfortable, it's probably a pretty good time to turn around and go home. I want to add a third one to that. If your gut's telling you that too, that's probably a great idea. There's all kinds of factors that get involved in deciding when to turn around and go back or when to land and get down on the ground and get to a safe spot. And we all have outside pressures, depending on what kind of job you're doing. It doesn't matter. They all have pressures we have pressures we put on ourselves. So on this flight, that looked pretty bad right there. What you see in this picture, in reality, the direction I was really going to go was pretty decent. There was a spot opening up and everything was great. But I had my own personal minimum set. As I was flying along, I knew at what point I was going to say, you know what? Yes, I want to get up for maintenance, but if I can't get there today, I'm just going to have to turn around and go back home and delay it another day. It doesn't matter what else I have going on and what's going to screw up. And that's part of being a pilot and trying to make the best decisions you can. And there's really a lot to that. So three things, and this isn't in any textbook anywhere. It's just something that I kind of like and tell myself. And I still, like I said, I still go back to the days when they said if you're slowing down and you're lowering your altitude, it's pretty good bet that it's time to be going home and turning around or finding a place to land. And if your gut is telling you as well, that's, you know, everything in life usually your gut is right. So if you're slowing down, you're dropping your altitude, then where you really want to be, and your gut's telling you it's time to go home. It's probably a good time to abort and turn around and get back home. So thanks for stopping by. Click the like button. It's getting late. I'm getting tired. Long day. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks. Been using so long, I'm not sure if I remember how to do it. Brr. It's like the sky opened up just for me. Yep. Holy shit. It.
