Never, ever, assume you can do something against procedure because you’ll be moving onto the next step in the process quickly. Always assume that you can be interrupted at any step and the time between any two steps is unpredictable. Don’t rely on memory, use notes. Don’t make assumptions during a hand-off, confirm everything. Don’t juggle stuff, put it down. And don’t ever park the helicopter outside the box because you’ll be taking off “soon”.
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It helps spread the helicopter spores over a larger area; reducing competition for minerals among juveniles of the same clutch. With so much of the world’s helicopter population propagated from cuttings, then tightly packed and raised to flight weight on smelter feed, you don’t see the wild type’s budding process much anymore.
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Too bad nobody noticed the big “DANGER” warnings painted on the ground…
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Wow, even police helicopters are unnecessarily brutal!
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Thanks so much for posting this.
I’ve seen this footage somewhere before, and I was, of course, shocked. And awed, of course, but mainly shocked.
But I did not bother to look for information on the people affected. You fixed that for me. And I’m glad to read this:
The commercial pilot and two passengers of N911FA received minor injuries. The commercial pilot and tactical flight officer (TFO) of N96BM received minor injuries. Also, one person on the ground received minor injuries.
ETA: glad only minor injuries were sustained, of course.
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Former helo pilot here.
Can confirm that’ll buff right out.
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At least at the end of the NTSB report it looks like they took a bunch of steps to prevent this happening again, but my favourite line:
The TFO stated he heard a loud bang and saw the lieutenant run toward a fire extinguisher. […] When he looked up he saw that the main rotor of the helicopter he was sitting in was gone.
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