Robinson helicopters 'cheaper, less powerful', inquest into fatal crash told
Tuesday, 15 June 2021
Robinson helicopters are the “scooter” of the helicopter world – a lighter, cheaper and less powerful model of aircraft made available to the masses, a crash investigator says.
Lecturer, aircraft engineer and former Civil Aviation Authority accident investigator Tom McCready said every part of a Robinson helicopter was lighter than the equivilient part in any other helicopter.
“I can pick up a Robinson blade to move it. I need about four guys to pick up a Huey [Iroquois helicopter] blade,” he said.
“[Robinson helicopters] are there for the masses to go flying. I think that was the intention.”
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McCready was giving evidence before Coroner Alexandra Cunninghame during an inquest into the deaths of student pilot James Patterson Gardner, 18, and instructor Stephen Anthony Combe, 42, of Wānaka.
They were killed when their Robinson R44 helicopter broke up midflight in the Lochy Valley, near Queenstown, in February 2015.
A 2016, a Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) report into the crash found no clear reason for the crash, but concluded that the rotor blades had struck the cabin in a mast bumping event.
Mast bumping happened when there was contact between an inner part of a main rotor mechanism and the main rotor drive shaft, causing the helicopter to break up in flight.
The inquest heard on Monday that there had been 313 Robinson R44 crashes resulting in 176 deaths worldwide. The cause of the crash was unknown in nearly 60 per cent of the cases.
McCready was a contributing author on an independent report, commissioned by the coroner, into the 2015 Queenstown crash.
He said he had already stopped using Robinson helicopters for his investigative work before the crash that killed Patterson Gardner and Combe.
His work usually entailed being at a remote, mountainous crash site, where weather could deteriorate quickly, so it was safer to be in a more powerful helicopter, he said.
Damage to Coombe and Patterson Gardner’s helicopter indicated there had been mast bumping and blade divergence – where the tips of the rotor blades became uneven, he said.
It was unclear which of those events happened first.
The blade struck the front of the helicopter cabin three times and that would have happened within “points of seconds”, leaving little or no time for the pilot to react, he said.
McCready, who had investigated 38 fatal helicopter crashes and many non-fatal crashes, said mast bumping in Robinson helicopters usually resulted in the machine breaking up while in flight.
Mast bumping incidents in other helicopters were very rare, he said.
Robinson helicopters designed totally differently to anything else he had worked on and required extra training and safety awareness in New Zealand.
“They are quite unique.”
Operators often had four-seater Robinson 44s to supplement their bigger helicopters and so they could offer a cheaper alternative for smaller groups.
In 2016, TAIC added Robinson helicopters to its watchlist, which resulted in organisations such as DOC banning their staff from using them.
“With the TAIC watchlist and all the things we’ve done over the years, there’s a great awareness of Robinson helicopters and their limitations amongst the flying community.”
The inquest is continuing.