jamesnixon.com
_________________________________________________
ABC TV HELICOPTER CRASH:
A PRINCESS DIANA MOMENT
When a hero crashes,
we all stay silent.
When Princess Diana was killed in the Parisian car crash we had a great opportunity to save hundreds and thousands of lives. Instead we did nothing.
The legacy she left as spokesperson against land mines was laudable, but if you could have asked her, she’d probably have given the green light to an even larger campaign.
Princess Diana died because of two reasons – choices of her own making.
First she got in a car driven by a drunk driver and second, she didn’t wear a seat belt. Her body guard, who sat in the front seat, was wearing a seat belt and is alive today.
If she was remembered for these two things she may have empowered people the world over to stand-up to peer pressure and thousands of young people who have subsequently died in crashes may be alive today.
Instead of using the emotion of her passing as a message for road safety – the moment passed – and was lost.
We Australians are in mourning after the loss of the ABC crew - a crew of heroes - in the chopper crash on the shores of Lake Eyre. Those of us who were Ansett Airline refugees feel even closer - journalist Paul Lockyer’s wife flew for Ansett.
Those of us with the same number of flying hours as their pilot know in our guts what caused it. We usually stay silent. Deferring to the crash investigators, we wait for the initial report – which will tell us what happened. But the detailed analysis as to why will take over a year to surface, will be sanitised, and the emotional moment will be lost.
Let’s look at history to see how this crash occurred. Another crash also happened in remote South Australia, in fading light or night (there is no link to the report on the ATSB website); when Erno Sopru crashed and was killed as he flew downwind, intending to land at a remote strip.
The exact same circumstances resulted in another crash at King Island, in July 1988 flown by Andrew Harris [business partner in The Daily Planet with John Trimble (nee Trimbole)] – He survived and was awarded the Star Of Courage for courageously rescuing his passenger despite 40% third degree burns and multiple injuries.
WHAT IS IT?
Visual flying in dusk or darkness, usually when flying downwind, the remote strip (or visual target, probably Lake Eyre, in the ABC’s case) - with little or no extraneous lighting - maintains the same visual perspective. Your normal cues for descent, your peripheral vision, don’t work unless you are looking in the direction of flight; so it’s possible to maintain the exact spacing from the runway, and it looks exactly normal, right up until you hit the ground – if you are descending.
Why would you be descending?
In an aeroplane, it’s because a light amount of forward pressure on the column / side stick is needed as each stage of flaps come out – pitching the aircraft down – completely changing the visual picture. And because of physiological tricks of the inner ear and vestibular system can ‘reset’ your brain to a false norm.
Instrument flying, where you train to believe your instruments rather than your eyes, is the fix. It’s why we do 30 degree banked turns. Less than five degrees and, if you hold it for long enough without counteracting visual cues, your brain readjusts itself to a new ‘level’. And you hit the ground five degrees wing low.
The transition from instrument to visual flying, or disorientation when visual flying, kills pilots around the world on a weekly basis.
As for helicopters? Well, most fixed-wing pilots hold these guys in awe. In flight school they used to say there was a special test to be a good pilot:
“Place your hand on your tummy and make circles. Then with your other hand – pat your head.”
Easy? Now to be a good chopper pilot:
“Place a pen in your writing hand, and another in your non-writing hand. Then another between each big toe and the one next to it. Now sign your name four times simultaneously.”
That’s how co-ordinated you have to be.
There is no doubt that a healthy, highly-experienced chopper pilot can survive for years, locking-on to instruments the second a visual cue vanishes or doesn’t seem right … the killer is when that warning-bell doesn’t go off. When you think you are 100% visual – turn your head sideways, miss a cue for a second, turn back, and the dusk is that tiny-bit darker. Clip a darkened sand hill and it all ends in a flash.
Before you start to question the pilot’s health (“but what if he had a heart attack?”) or the aircraft’s mechanical condition - you have to understand that military pilots are trained to go full-up anytime anything feels wrong. At altitude they can buy time to sort out the problem - (see Rule 1 below) which is why it was never wise to fly over the low level F111 area northeast of Tamworth.
And the chances of a sudden death heart attack? Very low in someone over fifty. Most sudden death heart attacks occur to men in their 40s, and very few who have regular aviation medicals.
After every crash like this we must remind all pilots - and implore all inexperienced ones – a night VFR (Visual Flight Rules) licence is a licence to die.
Just as an engine failure on takeoff in a heavily-laden twin can kill you (the second engine takes you to the scene of the crash); visual flying close to the ground at dusk or at night can also kill you.
Basic Flying Rules
Rule: 1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.
Rule: 2. Do not go near the edge of the air.
Rule: 3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees.
Never, ever, assume that you are any better than someone as highly-skilled and experienced as ABC chopper pilot Gary Ticehurst.
If he can get killed at dusk flying low, then none of us are safe.
Just don’t do it.
21st August 2011
_________________________________________________