05-09-2013, 06:05 PM
I guess it is the difference in perspective between a pilot and a non-pilot. It's not the long fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. I am not disputing that altitude is good, but in the case of the helicopter landing in downtown I guarantee you that she would have traded 3,000 feet over downtown Honolulu for 1,000 feet over puna any day. I say this because there seems to be this fanatical concern that if something goes wrong the pilot will feel compelled to dive his aircraft into the nearest occupied schoolbus. It is a standing joke among the aviation community that when the WWII fighter ace in a Hollywood movie can't find the carrier due to cloud cover and the necessity of radio silence and he runs out of gas, he immediately goes into a screaming power dive as though the wings have fallen off, culminating in a huge fireball fueled by all that gas he just ran out of. Whenever anything is going wrong the stick seems to come alive as though possessed and the pilot has to heroically fight it with both arms in a manner that a real pilot would never ever do.
When you run out of gas or lose your engine you're probably going to crash but that doesn't mean anyone needs to die. You crash as gracefully as you can and aim it between the trees. Fly it as far into the crash as you can. The first thing you do is try to pick the most open spot with the least obstacles and of course the fewest people. Obviously the higher you are the more spots are available but unless you have infinite altitude you can only glide so far. If you can't glide far enough then any extra altitude only gives you more time to think, which is always good but doesn't compare to simply having a good landing spot in front of you. I have had dozens of rope breaks at 500 feet or less and none of them were very scary because I had already planned what I was going to do. I have been more scared when I have gotten low a long ways from the airfield. I am not saying that altitude is bad. Obviously all else being equal it is good. What is getting me riled is a seeming lack of consistency, a tendency to mix and match risks and hazards in order to make the best case for one's particular argument. Making a dead stick landing in downtown Honolulu is something like, I dunno, 100 times more dangerous than a similar situation over most of Puna. Using weird math as seems to be all the rage in these arguments I would argue that if 3,000' is a safe altitude over Honolulu then 3,000'/100=30' would be safe over Puna. Yeah, that's stupid. What is safe varies second by second as the countryside rolls by underneath you. Over Honolulu, 10,000' in a helicopter would have allowed her to crash much more gracefully at Punchbowl, Tripler, Kapiolani Park, or maybe the Kahala Mandarin or Ala Wai golf courses. 3,000' got her to where she crashed between parked cars. Of course she was glad to have it and would have welcomed more but almost no amount of altitude would make up for having to land in downtown unless it was enough to get you PAST downtown. This link http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Vol...-N789N.htm talks about how the guys that wound up in the crater didn't make it home either but still survived.
I have gone off on a rant that I will undoubtedly regret in which I have challenged the ancient wisdom of all aviation that altitude = safety. However I have seen people do stupid stuff and feel good about it because they read it in a book, hence my negative reaction to people without ANY experience making grand pronouncements about what pilots should do. My honest reaction upon reading that a helicopter was able to land in downtown Honolulu where 90% of the ground is covered with people, vehicles, and buildings without anyone dying was that it would put to rest some of the concerns of Puna residents that falling helicopters will steer clear of the 90% of Puna that is not people, vehicles, or houses and instead home in on their living room. No, it turns out that pilots are not suicidal. As for the 3,000' that that particular pilot was flying at vs the 1,500' minimum that most helicopter pilots generally fly at when they have innocent children riding in the back, the manual says that the best glide ratio of a Robinson R-22 is 4.5 to 1. Keeping in mind that when the surrounding high-rises are 400' tall you only have about 2,500' to glide sideways with, even less really since you should have your spot picked with a few hundred feet to spare, a direct comparison with an open lava field is laughable.
When I was learning to fly 34 years ago a farmer a couple of miles from our little grass strip insisted that the gliders were making low passes between his barn and silo. I can't imagine how he was able to convince himself of that but the human imagination is a powerful thing when unfettered.
When you run out of gas or lose your engine you're probably going to crash but that doesn't mean anyone needs to die. You crash as gracefully as you can and aim it between the trees. Fly it as far into the crash as you can. The first thing you do is try to pick the most open spot with the least obstacles and of course the fewest people. Obviously the higher you are the more spots are available but unless you have infinite altitude you can only glide so far. If you can't glide far enough then any extra altitude only gives you more time to think, which is always good but doesn't compare to simply having a good landing spot in front of you. I have had dozens of rope breaks at 500 feet or less and none of them were very scary because I had already planned what I was going to do. I have been more scared when I have gotten low a long ways from the airfield. I am not saying that altitude is bad. Obviously all else being equal it is good. What is getting me riled is a seeming lack of consistency, a tendency to mix and match risks and hazards in order to make the best case for one's particular argument. Making a dead stick landing in downtown Honolulu is something like, I dunno, 100 times more dangerous than a similar situation over most of Puna. Using weird math as seems to be all the rage in these arguments I would argue that if 3,000' is a safe altitude over Honolulu then 3,000'/100=30' would be safe over Puna. Yeah, that's stupid. What is safe varies second by second as the countryside rolls by underneath you. Over Honolulu, 10,000' in a helicopter would have allowed her to crash much more gracefully at Punchbowl, Tripler, Kapiolani Park, or maybe the Kahala Mandarin or Ala Wai golf courses. 3,000' got her to where she crashed between parked cars. Of course she was glad to have it and would have welcomed more but almost no amount of altitude would make up for having to land in downtown unless it was enough to get you PAST downtown. This link http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Vol...-N789N.htm talks about how the guys that wound up in the crater didn't make it home either but still survived.
I have gone off on a rant that I will undoubtedly regret in which I have challenged the ancient wisdom of all aviation that altitude = safety. However I have seen people do stupid stuff and feel good about it because they read it in a book, hence my negative reaction to people without ANY experience making grand pronouncements about what pilots should do. My honest reaction upon reading that a helicopter was able to land in downtown Honolulu where 90% of the ground is covered with people, vehicles, and buildings without anyone dying was that it would put to rest some of the concerns of Puna residents that falling helicopters will steer clear of the 90% of Puna that is not people, vehicles, or houses and instead home in on their living room. No, it turns out that pilots are not suicidal. As for the 3,000' that that particular pilot was flying at vs the 1,500' minimum that most helicopter pilots generally fly at when they have innocent children riding in the back, the manual says that the best glide ratio of a Robinson R-22 is 4.5 to 1. Keeping in mind that when the surrounding high-rises are 400' tall you only have about 2,500' to glide sideways with, even less really since you should have your spot picked with a few hundred feet to spare, a direct comparison with an open lava field is laughable.
When I was learning to fly 34 years ago a farmer a couple of miles from our little grass strip insisted that the gliders were making low passes between his barn and silo. I can't imagine how he was able to convince himself of that but the human imagination is a powerful thing when unfettered.