Kenny Keller (YouTube) warns about the serious danger of tail rotors and strongly urges pilots and passengers to never exit a helicopter while the engine and blades are still turning. He stresses the importance of using checklists to counter complacency, cites Robinson Safety Notices (17, 18, 23), and shares personal anecdotes from EMS and training environments where experienced personnel were injured or killed despite knowing better.
Chapters
Tail rotors are serious business. I'm gonna jump over here and catch up with Flippers here. Looking for aviation program that actually teach me ground knowledge. That's us, Flippers, helicopter line, ground school. That's what we are. Helicopter, ground knowledge. And a little bit about the flying. We have videos on flying the helicopter, too. Tips on flying the maneuvers. We cover all that. So I don't think I'll be referring you anywhere else. 14, you got plenty of time. You could become a ground school member and you could start learning stuff like crazy and be way ahead of the game. Fox Deuce took aircraft accident class at Embry. Riddle number one cause of accidents is complacency. Checklists keep you from being complacent. Absolutely. Telling you, you try to start up or shut down another checklist, you're going to forget something. I've done it over the years, you know, I've made those mistakes. I've tried it. Because you think, oh, I've done this so many times, I'm getting good at it. I don't need the checklist. Well, guess what? You still forget something. And there could be that one thing that you forget that could end up being, you know, something that causes a fatal accident later. You just don't know. You have to follow the checklist. Any reputable company is going to want you using the checklist. Whether you got 500 hours or 10,000 hours, they want you using the checklist. FAA wants you using the checklist. Examiners want you using the checklist. Check. Airmen want you using the checklist. You have to use it. So next one up. This is based on the Robinson Helicopter Safety Notice about tail rotors. Now, keep in mind, this is for in the training environment. I think in the training environment, I never let students get out until the blades are done moving. And I think as new private pilots, I think the same thing. You should stay in the aircraft till the blades are done. If you go to your buddies to give rides to five of your buddies, and you're going to take two at a time. You take up land, shut down, keep everybody away, load your two, start up, go around, come back, shut it down, do that every time. And I know it's redundant, it takes more time, but unless you have a rated helicopter pilot there with you that you know and trust, that can keep people away from that tail rotor, you don't know what's going to happen. People are attracted to a helicopter especially. You land at somebody's house, they want to come running out. This is serious business. Sometimes I've you know, I've had this video before. Someone's like, well, you could never do that in a commercial environment given helicopter rides. If you have a commercial operation and you have a procedure set up on how you're going to hot fuel and get out and leave the blade spinning, that's up to you. I don't do that type of operation. I'm training. I fly for fun. The students I fly with fly for fun. What you do in a commercial operation for an employer later, you know, that can be a separate deal. But anyway, let's go ahead and roll that video and I don't see any other questions in there yet. Oh, well, let's get a question here. How is the pay as a helicopter pilot? It ain't that great, sorry. I started as a full time EMS pilot in 2009 or eight, somewhere around that area for 46,000. After five years of flying EMS, I left the 56,000. That's all I can tell you. You can't do it because you think you're going to make $100,000 a year or 150, not saying you won't. Somewhere, if you get a big paying helicopter job, that's great. Maybe it's going to be overseas or something. But in general, helicopter pilots don't make a lot of money for the time and effort that you have to put into it. But you fly because you want to, you fly because you love to fly. And the pay is just, you know, that's a bonus. That's, that's the reality of it. I am going to go ahead and roll the tail rotor video and we'll be back shortly. If you're one of those people that think accidents only happen to the other guy, I'm here to tell you they can happen to anybody and they can happen on a beautiful day when everything is going exactly as planned. In this case, this was the seat of the aircraft that I was in. This is where I ended up, about 30 or 40ft away from the helicopter. It's over there behind the ambulance that you can see here in the picture. I'm here to tell you they can happen to anybody at any time. Today I want to cover. Never exit the helicopter with the engine running. And I'm going to tell you why. One of our members just sent me an email just today and he was upset and he said, I just lost a friend and one of my instructors because he left the helicopter while the engine was running. Please teach your students to never leave the helicopter until the engine is out and the Blades come to a full stop. So the point is, these things happened. I'm going to give you three more reasons. One would be Robinson safety notice number 17. Never exit the helicopter with the engine running. And they go through and talk about what happens and people get killed, people get hurt. Robinson Safety Notice 18. Overconfidence prevails in accidents. And they talk about how people get brave and cocky and, oh, nothing bad's going to happen to me. That's when it happens. And the third one, Robinson safety notice number 23. Walking into tail rotor can be fatal. I know a fellow CFI that exactly this happened to. He landed somewhere, Somebody come walking up, walked into the tail rotor. That's somebody I know. A mechanic I know, very experienced, great mechanic, gets sent all over the world to work on helicopters. One day he was doing some tracking and had the blades spinning and he turned to pick up a tool and he said when he turned around, there was the tail rotor right in his face. He almost goofed. And he knew better, he was trained better, and he still almost did it. And then the third instance right here happened in Indiana a few years ago. It was a crew member on an aircraft. The crew member was trained, they knew better. They landed at a helipad, and it's helipad I've landed at many times. Got out, walked out, didn't duck, got hit in the head with the main rotor and was fatally wounded. The last point I want to make. For five years, I flew helicopter ems and I worked for a great company called Omniflight Helicopters. It was a super company. And we were not allowed to exit the aircraft until the blades were done moving. So we weren't kids, we weren't students, we were experienced pilots. And they didn't allow us to get out with the blades moving. There's probably a good reason why we're always talking about sharing and tweeting and liking. Here's one you ought to share, because you might just save a life, maybe even your own.
