Fatal Helicopter Accident Review on Icing

Fatal accident. Icing can kill you. That's what today is about. We are going to talk about a fatal accident and give you in detail what led up to it and how it happened and how these people were killed in a fatal accident. Our operations manager, Brian Rutledge has a really good presentation from our private pilot section. Private pilot weather section. Because we want you to understand how important this is. And then we're going to come back in a little bit and do a giveaway. And I have my notes here because I can't remember past the end of my nose. So we're going to come back and do a giveaway. And the giveaway is going to be this, that we're really proud of. The new HOGS backpack with the HOGS logo on it. Place for your water bottle. Another pack, another container over here. Not container, but you know, I'm talking about pouch. Inside there's a place for a laptop layer. There's a small bag in there for small goodies. And it's a nice deal. And we have a whole slew of products here for propilot. And there's a special that's ending tonight. We extended it one more day. Cause everybody extends the sale one more day, right? And at a really low price. We'll still be available after this tonight sale. So there'll still be a link down below at any time to go check out a full professional pilot membership where you get the bag, a knee board, all the books you're going to need, everything that's laying here, It's a whole bunch of stuff. That link will be down below. So we're going to give that away a little bit. Give the. Not the probe. We're going to give away the backpack. And then short video on Brian explaining to you how ice happens. Then I'm going to come back and tell you what I did. Stupid. And even though I made a stupid mistake, nothing bad happened. And then I made some good choices later in my career because of that. So we're doing 33 days of dumb things I've done, hopefully with a good outcome to help maybe you prevent making some of these dumb mistakes. So I'm going to tell you that story. And then Brian will talk about the accident in detail. And then we'll come back, do the giveaway. So first we're going to explain to you or Brian's going to explain to you how icing forms.

All right, this lesson is going to be all about structural icing. Very important topic. Things you're going to need to know for Your checkride, we'll go in a little bit, a little deeper and we'll talk about a accident that had occurred at the very end. So there's two conditions that are necessary for structural icing in flight to occur. So first you have to be flying through visible moisture, any visible moisture, and the temperature needs to be between plus 2 degrees Celsius and minus 10 degrees Celsius. Now with that being said, minus 10 degrees Celsius, there have been icing occurrences that have, that happened at temperatures -15 degrees C as well. So you know, take this for what it's worth. But on average the temperatures need to be between plus 2 and minus 10 degrees Celsius for structural icing. Can it occur in other temperatures? It sure can. So hazards of structural icing. This picture pretty much sums it up. You can see lift decreases, however, weight increases due to the weight of the ice and your thrust will decrease and your drag will increase again because of the weight of the ice. So it's going to affect all parts of the helicopter if you get structural icing, increasing the weight, increasing the drag, which is a recipe for a lot of problems down the road. So you have to make sure that you do a very good thorough preflight briefing. And you know, flying in known icing conditions, you read the PoH in most helicopters, most single engine helicopters, ones that we fly, Robinsons and such, flight in known icing conditions is prohibited. And you'll find that line in section 2 limitations in the pilot operating handbook. Here's a picture that kind of shows a close up view of different parts of the helicopter that icing can find itself or you can find it on your aircraft. So that forward one there on the left, the rotor blades, even though the rotor blades are turning, yes, they can and will get ice accumulation. Exposed parts such as your pitch change links, your control rods, things of that nature that are out of the cowling, that attach to the, to the mass of the rotor, those areas, your tail rotor can also accumulate ice as well as the inlet area for the air where the air is coming into the aircraft for engine cooling. You actually can get ice build up there as well.

Sometimes I go on too long. So I'll try to make this short and to the point because I know you're all waiting, trying to win a backpack. Here's my first big thing learning about icing mistake I made. We're checking the forecast. I'm flying and doing instructing and news reporting in a large city in the US and we're doing news calls and there's an accident that takes place. We get called to go shoot that accident from the news helicopter. I check the weather, they're calling for icing. Later in the day I make the decision to go. We pull the helicopter out the line. Guy's feeling for us who actually would part time would do camera work for us. So he was very familiar with aviation. He goes, you're going flying. And he kind of looked at the sky and I go, ah, I know they're calling for icing, but that's for later today. That's not for right now. Telling myself it was okay to go because I had time before the temperature was going to drop or drop to a point that I thought was a problem. We take off, we start flying towards this accident. And at first, you know, the raindrops are coming up the windshield. No big deal. Pretty shortly I realize, wow, the raindrops aren't moving anymore. And then pretty shortly they start accumulating and I can't see. So I do a circle looking out the window of the helicopter. I open the side window so I can see and I do circles and land in a field. There was a short or small airport like a couple miles away. I got out, used the checklist and scraped a big hole in the windshield or on the windshield, scraped the ice so I could see, hopped over to the nearby little airport. How embarrassed was I when we had to come get picked up and the aircraft sat outside and continued to get ice all through the night. The next day we had to go back, it had to be moved inside, it had to be thawed. That was a big deal, right? I made a mistake and took off. I was embarrassed over it, realized I made a bad decision, I shouldn't have even went. Luckily the boss says nobody got hurt. You got aircraft safely on the ground. You know, it does have a half a million dollar camera hanging off the front that had to sit on the ice all night. But you're okay, don't do it again, alright? So there I learned it was even I was too close to going, checking the weather and going, oh, within a couple hours, blah, blah, blah, you know what shouldn't have went. So continue the story. What good came out of that? Then in ems, I was very careful about icing, right? And I say when, Anytime you're near freezing above or below, and you can argue about the amount of degrees, but if you're close to freezing, you got to be really, really careful. So then into the EMS environment because of what I learned and because I got involved in an ICING accident where everything was okay. There was two times, two different EMS bases I worked at where I turned down a flight due to icing. Another local EMS company accepted the flight. After I turned it down, they got called, and then guess what happened. They ended up with patient on board landing in a field with ice. That happened at two different locations in northern Indiana where I turned down a flight at two different bases. Another EMS company took them and they landed and filled with ice. So it happened to me. Nothing bad happened. I learned I was very conservative after that one third incident. I want to tell you before we go to Brian's description of the fatal where something really, really bad did happen. This was after the other couple incidents. I got my mind set on if it's anywhere near freezing, I ain't going. So I'm working at the second EMS base. Get a call, it's nighttime. I think it's like 36 degrees. But you got to compute when you go up 500ft, 1,000ft, what's the temperature then, right? I analyze this flight. I go, eh, temperature's dropping. I'm not going to turn it down. Oh, and let me add, this is 36 degrees with mist or with light rain. Okay? So this is 36 degrees at night. Mist, light rain wasn't 36 degrees. And clear and dry. 36 degrees with moisture in the air. This other pilot comes in the next day and says, oh, why didn't you take that flight? And I'm like, because it was like 36 degrees and it was a night and the temperature's dropping. He was like, oh, you know how to take in that flight. You know, typical thing that shouldn't go on with your fellow pilots. So luckily, I also worked with a former Coast Guard pilot. So when I ran into him, I said, hey, I told him about this flight and what the conditions were, and I turned it down. He goes, yeah. And I go, well, you know, ying yang that I work opposite of was complaining that I should have took that flight. And he goes, Nah, 36 degrees. Nighttime temperature's dropping. Hell no, I wouldn't have taken it. And I thought, you know what? There you go. And the Coast Guard, he was ex Coast Guard, right? And I know for a fact those guys have to go in the worst weather. So if my fellow pilot, ex coast guard, says 36 degrees at night, with those conditions, you go up 1,000ft, kind of like I said. He goes, nah, I wouldn't do it. Icing's a big deal. It can get you killed. Other pilots can talk, you into it or badger you and say, oh, you should have went pussy. You know, make good decisions to fly another day. Helicopterground.com you make good decisions and you stay on the ground. So there's my firsthand experience where I made a mistake, nobody got hurt, nobody got killed. And then that's how it changed my thought process moving forward in my future decisions. And then there's other pilots going out when I said no, accepted the flights and ended up with patients on board in a field. What justice did you do to that patient when you went and picked them up and you got icing and then you landed in a field? So then you got to call a ground ambulance to come out and meet you wherever it is to load that patient, try to get him in the hospital. How long did you delay their career because you accepted that flight? You should never been flying in the first place. So let's go to Brian's description of a fatal accident and we will come back for the badass backpack giveaway.

So let's talk about NTSB report. This was January 2, 2013 in Clear Lake, Iowa. Details of the flight with a Bell 407. It was a night flight, it was a medical emergency flight with the pilot and two nurses on board. They impacted terrain, no survivors killed them all from about 600ft AGL, according to the NTSB report. They entered a climb up to about 1800ft and then began a descent and continued the descent until they impacted terrain. The asos. If you're not familiar with what an ASOS is, you need to go back in previous presentations and see all about ASOs. It's a automated Surface Observation service and very similar to maybe an atis, a little bit different. But essentially you get your pilots get in flight or they they are able to in flight listen to the weather at a particular location know airport. So the weather seven miles away from the accident site according to the ASOS or metar, appeared pretty adequate for night VFR operations and did not detect any freezing precipitation. So freezing drizzle or freezing rain, none of that was in the report itself. So if the pilot did check that he wouldn't have, you know, he would just assume, okay, well VFR operations, it's VFR I can fly. However, there was an Airmet Zulu, remember Air Mets are they are named according to the conditions and Zulu is for icing. There was an airmen for icing along the route of flight and there were also several pireps from previous pilots for icing along that route of flight were filed. So the Metar or ASOS at that airport seven miles away from the accident in Mason City Municipal Airport. This is what it was. So on the third day at 0253 Zulu, it's an automated report. The winds were 3,00 at 8 knots, 8 statute miles visibility. Broken 1700. Overcast 3300. Yeah, I'd say it's an okay night to fly. I mean, yeah, it's broken at 1700. As long as you don't have mountainous terrain, yeah, you could fly VFR there. You got eight statute miles visibility. However, the next part, M03, that means minus 03 degrees Celsius and M05 is your dew point, minus 05 degrees Celsius. So the temperature and the dew point are getting close together, which means the air is just about saturated and the temperature is minus 3. And at the very beginning of the presentation, I told you that plus 2 degrees Celsius to minus 10 degrees Celsius is the temperature range that typically you could encounter icing conditions if visible moisture was present. So the altimeter was 3005. So there you go, minus three on the temperature. And you can guess where this story is going, probable cause and findings. So the pilot inadvertently, so he didn't do it on purpose, but he inadvertently encountered localized icing conditions and then he lost control and hit terrain, impacted the terrain, killed everybody on board. So again, you can't see the ice, but in flight until you actually encounter it and it starts to stick to the aircraft itself. So with that being said, I'm going to switch over to foreflight and on foreflight I want to show you something here. We're going to go up to the northwest and actually real quick I'll just show you notice down here, long down here in Sacramento, where I'm from. See all these red dots? That just indicates ifr. That's because all the fires, a lot of smoke. Visibility is down to about two and a half miles out here. But nonetheless, let's go up here and let's take a look up in this northwest corner. What I'm going to do is I'm going to turn on icing and you'll see this blue area that just showed up. This is airmets for icing and this is today current time. It's 11:12 Pacific Daylight Time here in, in Sacramento and it's a Thursday. And so let's, let's click on this icing airmet and you'll see about third line down, it says airmet Zulu. There you go, icing airmet. It's active from 10,000ft to 21,000ft. A lot of people will say, well I'm flying a helicopter, I'm not going to be flying at 10,000ft so I don't have to worry about it. Well let's zoom in and let's take a look right here Mount Olympus right here in the center. Let's circle that so we don't lose it. There's Mount Olympus and you can see this number right here, 7969. So essentially 8,000ft. This is an 8,000 foot peak in this area. Now we said that this air mat, if we go back and tap the air mat again, it's active from 10,000ft to 21,000ft and MSL. So at this point here, 2,000ft above it, visible moisture, if it's present temperature is right, you could get icing. You could be flying a helicopter through there depending on what your job is. But let's add another layer to this. Let's look at the radar. Well there you go. There is moisture in the air. And so even on a summer day in the middle of August you could essentially find yourself in a position say maybe you're going from this airport here. What is this? I can't even pronounce that. Quilla ute. Let's see what its weather is. So it's showing one and a quarter miles of visibility, rain, mist, few clouds at 500, broken at 1100 and the temperature of 17, dew point 16. So you got a real close temperature dewpoint. So it's saturated. However, this airport elevation is only 193ft. So it is 7,800ft lower than that mountain peak. So of course the temperature is going to be warmer. But there's precipitation, there's saturation and we come back over here and if that system, let's play this, let's play this and see which way it's going to move. So I just turned on the, see what it does here. Okay, well looks like my connection is not so not working so good anyways. I was trying to see if the, the radar was going to show the precipitation moving in a particular direction to see if it was going to go right towards that mountainside. But nonetheless you get the point. So you know, thorough pre flight weather briefings, you know, if I was a pilot that was, you know, needing to go do a rescue at the top of Mount Olympus today at this time, not going to go. I'm looking at IFR conditions over here at this airport. I see low IFR here, I see Precipitation all out here and all off the coast. And knowing that this peak is only 2,000ft below the level for this air mat. Again, let's take a look at that 10,000 to 21,000ft. I'm not going up there, I'm just not going to do it. So my, my day's over as far as I'm concerned. So again, anyways, you know, you gotta, the only reason I wanted to pull up the foreflight was just to kind of give you an idea that, you know, just because it's summertime doesn't mean you can't find yourself in a condition as a pilot where icing conditions can happen. So, you know, do thorough pre flight briefings, thoroughly understand what icing can do, the dangers of it, avoid it. If you do find yourself in it, make sure you advise ATC if you're, if you're ifr, you need a different route, you need a different altitude. Again, helicopters by nature don't have the same climb performance as an airplane. So a lot of times in your weather briefing you may see that the air is warmer above you, maybe it's 3,000ft above you, but you just don't have the power to get up there. So, you know, you really, really got to take the icing thing seriously and just do a good thorough pre flight briefing. That is it for icing.

And as Brian just said, you have to really think about this. Even on a elevation where it's warmer, you might be flying up to a colder elevation. And Brian's got some good stories since he flies in California about that. And otherwise I'm going to walk over here while I'm talking just because this, I know it doesn't really, it's not that loud in the mic, but it annoys me. So I see some comments there and I like, I appreciate that. Right. Somebody just fessed up to an overspeed. They just had their blades pulled. Good for you for sharing that with us. That's one of the things that, you know, we've talked about the overspeed in the last couple weeks and you know, I feel good about that. Right. We've had a lot of, It's a bad incident, but a lot of great feedback from people, been very supportive. And if we save somebody later because we've convinced somebody who was on the verge of saying, ah, man, should I mention this to somebody? Yeah, because you might just save somebody's life later.

So.

Yeah, Brian made a good point. Right. And you have to always be checking whether I gave you my couple examples earlier and they were pretty laid back because I was just trying to make it through real quick with those stories. But those are for real stories, right? That icing that I got into, you know that it woke me up, right? It just. And we all need bad things to happen to us. I hate to. How can I word this? You need the shit scared out of you one time, right? On some things because we can preach to you in videos and do training and you can read books and we can tell you about our stories, but some things you almost have to experience. And hopefully you have some of those wake up experiences where you go, man, I got to rethink this. Hopefully you survive. So we're doing our best just to try to give you ideas. And we'll get to the giveaway here in a minute, but I want to get this out. 32 more days. I'm committed to the first of the year. We're going to talk about something every day. And a lot of them are going to be based on my screw ups. Some of them we might be on something else. Like we made a list. I got 28 video ideas. We came up with like in minutes. We were sitting on the couch deciding what to do for the rest of the month and the accident came up where the iPad got jammed in the pedals and the helicopter crashed and killed everybody. And they deciphered after that was why iPad getting stuck in the pedals and the pilot couldn't reach them, right? So put down below what you want to see in the next 32 days. I have a list of 28. But if you bring up a topic that you want to hear about, bring it up or you want to share something that might spark my interest. Here's what we've been talking about. Everybody shares fancy cool pictures on Facebook and Instagram. And look at me, I'm cool. And look at me laying on this rooftop helipad. And everybody wants to talk about the cool factor. People don't talk about the bad stuff enough, right? Let's learn from each other. And it's been proven, you know people, not everybody, some people like my stories, right? Because I'm not afraid to tell you what I did wrong. Because I learned from it. So everything I've done stupid. I then changed moving forward, right? And that's how we learn. I learn every freaking day. I learn every time I go fly, I learn something new. So put your ideas down below. Keep sharing your stories. Share a story about an accident you've had a couple of people shared icing story in there. Fess up to it, right? Let's talk about these things. Let's help the pilots not as experienced as us learn or it doesn't matter. I learned from guys that come in here that's had 200 hours and they were taught something in say, Florida and they'll teach me something and I'll go, that's really cool. I'm going to steal that. I like that. Right? We're always fricking learning. So you learn from other pilots. Let's learn from each other's mistakes as well. Okay? Let's just not share only. Oh, the fancy cool. Look at me. There's more to flying than shiny paint and navigation lights in pretty pictures on Facebook, right? There's a lot more to it, which is what we've always been trying to do here on this channel. So keep comment down below and share this video for. I don't hardly ever ask people to share a video or like a video because I watch Gary Vee a lot and Gary Vee says, make content for your fucking soul. Don't make it for likes and comments. Right? And that's generally what I do. Our videos don't get that many views. I know it. I get it. 12 years on YouTube and our average video gets 3 to 500 views. I make content about what I want to talk about and I like to teach. Alright, let's get to the backpack giveaway. Right? There it is. You saw in the beginning of the video. This is going to follow up to we were live yesterday and live the day before. We're live again. So we're going to give away the backpack. And of course, you know, I got to mention there's a link down below. This is the private pilot study guide. 400 questions. This is badass. Nice book. Quality book. Yesterday we asked about the intensities of ice. And so since this is the topic of the day, to win that, please spell correctly. I know you want to win the backpack. Heather is watching. She'll let me know who the winner is. And remember, we go through this every day, every time we go live. Oh, well, my chat says this. Heather has to claim a winner by what our chat reads. We know for a fact your device may not read the same order of chat. That's the world we live in. Some people's Internet's faster than others. It doesn't display the same. I've given away thousands and thousands of dollars of stuff in 12 years. And when people pick after fact, I get frustrated because I've been given back for many years and I continue to so play fair, do the best job you can to answer, spell correctly, and don't argue with Heather's choice, what she reads in the chat, please. All right, out of respect for all the giveaways that we do. So, for the backpack, what are the three types of icing? It's this, this, and this. What are the three icing types? Three. Three types of icing. Like I said yesterday, we did intensities of ice. Today we're doing three types of icing. Takeaway from today, just spend the time on these pre flights. And I told the story about how, you know, I did check whether the day I got icing and this was like, we'll say 1pm it's not forecasted until 5. But we were still there, close enough. And Heather was asking about this before, you know, on the, during Brian's video presentation. It was rolling. And she's like, what's the good rule? And I go, you know what? But the good rule is if you're anywhere near freezing, think about it, right? Like some guys will say, like that EMS pilot, oh, 36, oh, hell, I'd go, you know what? If you're anywhere near freezing above or below, you're risking it. And because the temperature you got is possibly taken from an on ground observation, we know as you go up an altitude, it gets colder. And that arrow, those rotor blades, gets colder as it speeds up moisture. Near freezing, Be conservative and stand up to people that go, oh, you know, it's your call. It's your life. Make good decisions. If you're anywhere near freezing, don't go. If it's warming up, that might be different. But if it's getting colder, definitely not. And if it's 20 degrees outside and it's, you know, that's different. If it's really cold, that snow and moisture will just go right off your rotor blade. It blows right off your aircraft. No big deal. Well, let me rephrase that. You can still build up ice around like cowlings and have an engine failure. So you have to be careful. But the most dangerous time is anytime you're near icing or near freezing, 32 degrees above or below. Because I'm still old school and I talk Fahrenheit. When you're anywhere near freezing, you got to be thinking about, what's the temperature at the altitude I'm going to fly at? What's happening with the temperature? There's visible moisture. Am I going to get icing? It's fricking scary. Heather, do you have a winner?

Yeah.

Skid's up. Skids up again. Man, I hope you're going in and sporting all this hogs gear at your flight school because I know everybody there's going to appreciate that. We love it. So any other good comments or anything I should expand on there, Heather? Ground residence. That's coming up. Guess what? Skids up. You may not know about 2005, I was ejected from a helicopter after ground residence incident. You may have heard about it. You may have not. That's on my list. That's on my list. That's what one thing I'm definitely going to talk about. And the story in that one's going to be about vibrations. We were experiencing vibrations before my accident. And this is all in the FAA accident report if you want to read it. I was complaining about vibrations to the point of I was threatening to ground the aircraft and everybody talked me in to keep flying it. And then it blew itself apart and severely injured the owner, injured my back and injured the kid in the backseat. There's another one where I should have stuck with it, and I'll tell the whole story in another video. But here's what happened. This is documented. I was in the lobby with the airport manager and I said, you guys need to figure out what's going with this aircraft because I'm gonna have to put my foot down and ground it. Something is going on and you're not getting it fixed. And I don't know what the problem is, but I'm telling you there's an issue. And then shortly after that, the accident happened. That's documented in black and white by the airport manager that was in public. I was complaining. I'm telling them there's something wrong. And they go, oh, we think it's just your pilot technique. And I went, my pilot technique? At this point in my career, I haven't figured out to properly pick up and set down a helicopter. Yeah, not my pilot technique. So let's talk about more of those. That is on the list. I am going to talk about the helicopter accident. Matter of fact, screw it. Let's talk about tomorrow. Let's get right to the juicy stuff, because there's a good lesson in that one about the vibrations. And there's more lessons, right? Like I was complaining. And I'll go into it tomorrow because the warning signs were there. But guess what? Here's the problem. I was almost to 2000 hours, right? I spent all that time getting to my 2000 hours. So I kept flying it because I was ready to hit 2000. I could move on with my career. And that's what's Inspired the next 32 days of videos is I'm still making my livelihood from helicopters, right? I'm here talking to you about helicopters and you know, ours is down torn apart in Tennessee, you know, 50 some thousand dollars worth of damage. This is not an easy life. And this is why I'm talking about, you know, social media. Oh, look at me. Look how cool this is. It is cool. It's the coolest thing on the freaking planet. It is. Helicopters are extremely cool. But stumbling block after stumbling block after stumbling block throughout my career, financial or otherwise, getting injured, whatever it is.

This.

Is not an easy way to make a living as a pilot, as a helicopter pilot. And a lot of bad things can happen. And there's those of us that are lucky enough to have bad things happen, not give up, learn from it and share these stories. So that's Inspired the next 32 days of videos is me to be vulnerable and say, look, here's what I did. And then I know how dumb it was afterwards, right? But every time I've made a stupid mistake, I've learned from it. And I've been sharing them for 12 years, you know, in these videos because I'm human like everybody else, right? And I make mistakes. We all do. We're humans. That's never going to change. Well, until I guess they put chips in our head and make us perfect robots. I don't know. Other than that, we'll keep them going. So keep the comments going. Subscribe if you're new so you can come around for the next 32 days. We're going to find all kinds of fun, interesting stuff to talk about. And I did mention at the beginning we got a pro pilot deal. We can get all this stuff and we'll keep this available. But today there's a discount that goes away at midnight. We extended for today. We're not extending tomorrow or the 48 hours until the end of the week. The price will go up, but we'll keep a link down below. Regardless, when you see this video you can get propilot and let's, let's do this as we go. This is our HOGS wall of fame. If you're new to us, we used to have seven panels and we filled it up with pictures and we decided to go digital. So these are our private pilots rolling on the screen one after another after another. These are our instrument pilots and our final approach course pilots. These are people that have come here to fly with us and did their rating with us here in the R44. See that's me. That's the yellow R44 Fancy Hogs logo we really like These are our commercial people it's ready to roll through again. These are CFI and CFI 2s. So the Hogs Wall of Fame that's what that is now digital and we're so proud of that all started with an idea years ago and once you pass your checkride using the help of Hogs and you send in a picture we now just this is way easier right? We just put you in the presentation we get you right up on the wall and we send you the old.

Live to fly another day helicopterground.com we'll.

Talk about that more in another video as well just because that this came about for me flying EMS and learning something cool there as well so leave us subscribe give us a like make a comment share with your friends one time help us make a video that people actually watch that'll be kind of cool. All right see you. Peace out.