One very lucky patient, pilot,...

[aeromed202]

Found this in the news. See how many points at which this incident could have been avoided if only...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ZrUm3QweE&feature=player_embedded

[rayrey10]

Oops! Wonder what kind of damage that cause the helicopter?

[TARPSBird]

I saw that comin'. If they had manually rotated the helo 90 degrees to the left before take-off the pilot could've applied forward rotor (or whatever they call it) and cleared the road without hitting the power lines. They had enough folks standing around to do it.

[n4gix]

Oops! Wonder what kind of damage that cause the helicopter?

Damage to the main rotor tip's. You could easily hear the imbalanced harmonics.

Agreed that the pilot made a very bad decision, perhaps forgetting that the main rotor's tips will cone upwards, thereby decreasing the clearance distance.

Should have had the 'ground crew' manually turn it 180º prior to engine start, and perhaps pushed it down the road a few dozen feet to provide additional clearance into the empty field used for the emergency landing.

One of my most frequent nightmares is getting trapped under powerlines that cross my flightpath every few hundred feet leaving me "stuck" in the tunnel with no escape! :cost1:

[rayrey10]

Damage to the main rotor tip's. You could easily hear the imbalanced harmonics.

I watched the video again with the volume up and you can hear the difference.

I am not a pilot so I'm not going to second guess his decisions, but it seems like he could have taken a different approach.