Rescue 116 Crash at Blackrock, Co Mayo(Mod note in post 1)

Irish Steve wrote: »

I'm not sure that this evening's Prime Time report has added anything new to the discussion that's already happened here over a considerable number of days.

My Sky Box stopped recording before the end of the program, so I've ended up watching part of the report again on the RTE +1 channel, which is why I am only posting this now, as I wanted to make sure I missed nothing that might be significant.

So, what do we know about the final flight of 116. They flew from Dublin to the Blacksod Bay area somewhere in the vicinity of 4000 Ft, and then flew an outbound track to close to Blackrock, carried out what looks like a standard teardrop procedure turn back towards Blackrock, and then would have turned inbound towards the Mayo Coast, with an intention of arriving at 220 Ft above the water south of Blacksod, where they would then have had a clear unobstructed run into Blacksod for a landing on the helipad there, with the Blacksod light providing a very good visual confirmation of their position.

Given the distances involved, I would have expected them to have crossed Blackrock outbound at an altitude of approximately 4000 Ft, and then after completing the outward section of the teardrop turn, they would have left 4000 Ft and started their descent, with the initial descent being to 3000 Ft on the inbound leg of the teardrop, as that would fit with the sort of profile they would fly on a regular basis as part of a standard instrument approach profile, with this approach starting further out to allow cloud break and transition to visual flight with the necessary and required safety distance off shore.

The systems on the aircraft would have been completely and totally able to perform such a procedure automatically without crew intervention. We do not know if the procedure for this approach profile was pre loaded into the data base of the on board computers, if they were hand flying, this is the sort of procedure they would have been doing on an almost daily basis to make contact with trawlers and the like that they were recovering casualties from, it would have been a very regular process for all of the crew.

What is not clear at present is that for reasons not yet explained, 116 made contact with the west edge of Blackrock Island, evidenced by the presence of "significant debris" on the island, and the presence of significant wreckage not far off shore which will hopefully be recovered tomorrow.

Jurgen Whyte has stated that he saw nothing unusual or abnormal about carrying out such a procedure, his investigation will need to ensure that it was carried out correctly.

Prime Time have stated categorically that Black Rock was not in the EGPWS of the S92, but they have not given a definitive source for that information, and a number of organisations they have asked for comment have specifically declined to comment citing the AAIU investigation as their reason for not doing so.

Given the profile that was implied in the course they had flown, which was probably related to attempting to make radio contact with R118, I am having problems determining why R116 would have descended to 220 Ft so early in the approach, given that the AIS system should have shown the Blackrock Light on one or more of their instruments, as it is in that database, and a descent of that height over such a short distance would have been outside of their normal operating parameters, and would have made reliable radio contact with 118 and Shannon more difficult.

We clearly still have as many unanswered questions as we had before this evening's episode of Prime Time, I was hoping that with people on the ground and close to the investigation, Prime Time were going to put some new or updated information into the public domain, but that did not happen tonight, we can only hope that after a productive day on site tomorrow, there may be some more specific news released.