Tag: aircraft accident

Not Black Hawk Down! Helicopter Crash – Part 4

Survivability Issues in Crash into Water As per their analysis, Brooks et al. surmised that survival after crash in water depends upon “amount of warning time, rapidity of sinking and inversion” [13]. An advise worth following by all helicopter operators, based on this study, is that while flying over water, all occupants in helicopter must …

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Not Black Hawk Down! Helicopter Crash – Part 3

Crashes into Water Flying helicopters over water has an accident rate of 2.0 per 100,000h as compared to 0.4 per 100,000h in fixed wing aircraft, as reported by Civil Aviation Authority’s helicopter airworthiness panel report in 1986 [13]. High fatality rate in case of helicopter crash into water occurs due to sinking of helicopter and …

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Not Black Hawk Down! Helicopter Crash – Part 2

Offshore Oil and Gas Operations Baker et al. reported that there were 178 helicopter crashes from 1983 to 2009 related to offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. This was based on the database of the National Transportation Safety Board [2, 11]. 30% of those crashes were fatal, with 139 lives lost …

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Not Black Hawk Down! Helicopter Crash

Danger is an inherent component of military helicopter missions. Remember the daring mission launched to capture a Somalian warlord on 3rd October 1993 when an American Black Hawk (Super-Six One) was shot down in the city of Mogadishu. Another area of perilous operations is emergency medical missions and oil and gas operations. Two recent reviews …

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Old Facts, New Insights – Lessons from A-320 Part 4

This interesting study by Sarter and Woods revealed that the automation surprises “occur when the crew detects that automation or aircraft behaviour is deviating from their expectations” [2]. In turn, such ‘surprises’ provide the vital opportunity (and learning) to correct unexpected or undesirable aircraft behaviour.

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