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

sparrowcar

Contact lost just before 0100 off the west coast of Achill island on a rescue mission.
Search in progress including all available ships and Rescue 115.

Hopefully a positive outcome to this.

Please keep replies civil, and respectful of the crew and their families.

Please do not speculate as to any cause unless you have a factual basis to do so (and can back it up with information released to the public).

There will be zero tolerance for troublemakers or those that choose to ignore these guidelines.

There are other moderator messages in the thread, as a result of issues that have arisen, and we will be less forgiving going forward, due to the ongoing sensitivity of this incident

As per normal boards guidance, any comments on moderation are off topic and should be addressed directly to mods or cmods by PM. Any part of posts which are off topic in such a manner may be edited or removed, with possible sanction. Non news posts will be moved to the parallel R116 Non news and discussion thread

Should any new reports, updates or news stories come out, posts which can be boiled down to "I Told You So" or other triumphalism about previous commentary will result in significant punishment.

Any threadbans will carry over to any replacement thread should this approach 10,000 posts

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No Dispatch

Gadgetman496 wrote: »

Would the Information they have from the black box\voice recorder indicate if any terrain proximity alarms were active?

Yes. All aural and visual alarms would be recorded.

Gadgetman496

No Dispatch wrote: »

Yes. All aural and visual alarms would be recorded.

So if initial findings suggest that there was no mechanical failure, it could still be possible that if no alarms were present (and we don't know that yet) that instrument failure is still not established or ruled out?

elastico

No Dispatch wrote: »

Yes. All aural and visual alarms would be recorded.

In a scenario that a crew were planning to land anyway would these alarms still activate?

Presumably a crew would just ignore them or is there a cancel button one would press.

elastico

CardinalJ wrote: »

I genuinely laughed at that.

EDIT - I'm finding it funnier as time goes on.

That's great for you. Suggest you look at the thread on pprune for example and the amount of people with expert knowledge of S92 helicopters.

I doubt the investigation team have that level of knowledge of the S92 but you seem to know better.

I never said every contributor to these threads is an expert, merely that there are an awful lot of very well informed people contributing useful information.

TomOnBoard

Marine Traffic showing that the helicopter has now left the Blackrock area and the Gearoidin appears to be heading in. Granuaile and Ocean Challenger still out there North and East of the island, not moving but no longer in proximity to each other.

Means Of Escape

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Huge difference between highly qualified professional air accident investigators and people on the internet bashing their heads off a keyboard in an effort to be nearly right in one of their theories. Huge difference.

Not really
Most who are "banging their heads off the keyboards " are putting the same theories forward as qualified investigators based on their knowledge of aircraft and all matters pertaining to aviation
The educated proposals presented by many are limited and have a narrow scope based on the events .
More often than not the release of data and findings generally concur with the proposals within this scope .

BoatMad

I read through the whole thread on PPRuNe. by and large is was courteous and respectful . It also seems to attracting people with enormous experience of SAR, S-series helis, etc. I would take what many contributors say very seriously .

Yes in the absence of more info , its inevitable that speculation creeps in, I dont see that as wrong though ,

Reading through PPRuNe on thing that puzzled me , was the use of the Guanuaile and military divers, Ive been on a detailed tour of that ship , That is not a sea floor lift ship . nor equipped to support diver activity ( per se) . Surely a DSV and the use of commercial saturation divers would have led to the recovery of the aircraft much more quickly. It does seem a rather hotch potch collection of equipment. The Guanuaile is in my opinion ( as an amateur yatchmans ) way to big to operate with 60m of a rocky coast in another other then flat calm ( dynamic positioning or not )

There seems to have been a reluctance to " contract " in specialised skills

TomOnBoard

Work at Blackrock seems to have been completed for today, as remaining vessels head in.

elastico

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Work at Blackrock seems to have been completed for today, as remaining vessels head in.

No news update from RTE. Not sure if that means they got a positive result with the lift or not.

Welruc

Word on the ground here that the got it lifted and sadly no sign of the missing crew

TomOnBoard

deuceswild wrote: »

Word on the ground here that the got it lifted and sadly no sign of the missing crew

Lifted and onto one of the vessels out there? If so, that is a hugely important development.

prunudo

elastico wrote: »

No news update from RTE. Not sure if that means they got a positive result with the lift or not.

No but what Pat McGrath did say was that family would be informed first and that the media would be informed in due course as has been done so far with the investigation.

BoatMad

I think we have enough information to ask some questions

(a) Was Blackrock the intended destination , The radio traffic would suggest it was not

(b) If it was , why ? , its not a suitable landing for a big Heli and has no refuelling

(c) A westerly approach would be suitable for Blacksod as the lighthouse is to the east of the pad, a westerly approach to blacksod ( which was essentially a downwind approach , would not have been a good way to approach blackrock )

(d) One would expect that the terrain warning systems would have altered the pilots , did it

I expect we will answers too these soon

BoatMad

No Dispatch wrote: »

I agree.
In fact, I'll just come out and say that this was classic CFIT.
That may not sit well with some of the over eager censors here, but some of us woke up, smelt the coffee, and live in the real world.

well yes it certainly seems to have some elements of CFIT

however we are far from aligning the holes in the cheese

Welruc

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Lifted and onto one of the vessels out there? If so, that is a hugely important development.

Its on the deck of the granuaile.

mickdw

BoatMad wrote: »

I think we have enough information to ask some questions

(a) Was Blackrock the intended destination , The radio traffic would suggest it was not

(b) If it was , why ? , its not a suitable landing for a big Heli and has no refuelling

(c) A westerly approach would be suitable for Blacksod as the lighthouse is to the east of the pad, a westerly approach to blacksod ( which was essentially a downwind approach , would not have been a good way to approach blackrock )

(d) One would expect that the terrain warning systems would have altered the pilots , did it

I expect we will answers too these soon

Blackrock was not the INTENDED destination. Blacksod was. That is known. Local refueler had been in touch and was expecting them.
It would appear that approaching blacksod from west over clear water was a known approach in poor visibility.
From what was reported on prime time, the mapping system used to drive the terrain warning system did not have blackrock shown at all.

Personally I still believe that it was a mistaken approach at wrong location.

elastico

mickdw wrote: »

Blackrock was not the INTENDED destination.

"Human behaviour" to quote RTE, set blackrock as the destination instead of blacksod. Its as simple as that.

Attachment not found.

arubex

Means Of Escape wrote: »

Most who are "banging their heads off the keyboards " are putting the same theories forward as qualified investigators based on their knowledge of aircraft and all matters pertaining to aviation

Indeed and it's worth considering that the AAIU investigators ( and those of the AAIB in the UK ) aren't and can't be experts in every system of every aircraft.

Whilst recruited from an aviation background they are required to have a breadth of general knowledge, rather than being deep SMEs in one aviation-related silo, and when they have questions they call experts from the respective fields. Those fields might lie outside aviation too; foresters, high-voltage electricians, mariners, cartographers, computer programmers...

When the AAIB ran recruitment in Flight a few years back one of the essential skills required was written and verbal communication, as important as holding an ATPL.

Discodog

People have said that it was a normal approach to Blacksod. But why design a route to fly close to the only obstacle for miles? Surely the normal approach should be well clear of any obstacles or possible confusion?

Either the normal approach is flawed or as has been suggested, they flew further out to try & get comms with the other helicopter.

TomOnBoard

elastico wrote: »

"Human behaviour" to quote RTE, set blackrock as the destination instead of blacksod. Its as simple as that.

If that is the case, why would they have still been flying at 90 knots?

Discodog

TomOnBoard wrote: »

If that is the case, why would they have still been flying at 90 knots?

Surely if your destination was Blackrock (in error) you would descend slowly to cloudbase well away from it & then approach very slowly ? I have watched a lot of SAR landings. The final guidance is given by the winchman hanging out of the door. Mark one eyeball beats any altimeter or radar.

I have even seen them land at Galway hospital with one guy hanging out of each door

elastico

TomOnBoard wrote: »

If that is the case, why would they have still been flying at 90 knots?

Last recorded speed was 9Knts.

592162-sar-s-92-missing-ireland-16.html#&gid=1&pid=1

Edit

Can't seem to load picture. Its in the thread below page 16.

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/592162-sar-s-92-missing-ireland-16.html

Post 317 you may need to register to see image.

Means Of Escape

CardinalJ wrote: »

I genuinely laughed at that.

EDIT - I'm finding it funnier as time goes on.

Collectively being the key word in his statement

Discodog

elastico wrote: »

Last recorded speed was 9Knts.

Edit

Can't seem to load picture. Its in the thread below page 16.

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/592162-sar-s-92-missing-ireland-16.html

That's virtually a hover or flare to land. I wonder if it's accurate ?

Gadgetman496

Stheno

Gadgetman496 wrote: »

God love the families

Tenger

Its been repeatedly posted by mods and admins that the heavy handed moderation was initially to stop the barstool speculation that the thread was devoving into. Since then we have seen numerous infractions for breach of longstanding boards.ie regs (arguing inthread and ignoring mod instruction mainly)
We have recently seen the heated sniping over who knows more about subjects such as diving, tugboats cranes.
The boards.ie team are very aware of your opinions and arent taking these steps as a popularity contest.
But its very simple. If you cant follow the line then go elsewhere. We have tried to allow leeway when able, but then we have to jump in with bold text again.
Until we get news on the missing crew and more info released by the AAIU (not 3rd hand) the wild speculation is to cease.

elastico

Discodog wrote: »

That's virtually a hover or flare to land. I wonder if it's accurate?

No reason for it not to be. It ties in with all the other known facts at this stage.

spaceHopper

No sign of the missing crew must be very hard for the families. Wonder if it's worth doing a second land search of the island.

Gadgetman496

spaceHopper wrote: »

No sign of the missing crew must be very hard for the families. Wonder if it's worth doing a second land search of the island.

I don't think they were ever fully relying on the hope the two remaining crew were with or near the craft. This screenshot of the sweep they carried out recently clearly shows they were doing all they could to locate them.

That said, with the passage of so much time, I don't know what they can do next.