Quote:
Originally Posted by speeder
I know very little about aviation but even in the absence of the fancy "terrain avoidance" feature that it did not have, doesn't every aircraft have a simple gauge that tells you how far from earth you are? As in, how high above ground?  |
Here is my take on what happened in the final moments. We will probably never know exactly.
The pilot was running out of VFR conditions as the rising terrain was meeting a thick fog ceiling at around 1500' elevation. He attempted an emergency pop-up to get above the soup with cloud tops at 2400'. Not far to go but with no visual reference it is much more difficult in a helo than it seems. From the data he made it to 2300' elevation before becoming disoriented and rolling into a steep left downward spiral at the rate of 4000'/minute. At that rate of descent all the gauges are rolling and it is very difficult to get any useful info from them. With only about 1000' of room before finding the earth he had maybe 5-6 seconds to regain control and no reference to do it. He ran out of options.
Their final rate of decent was roughly dropping like a stone and no terrain avoidance would have saved them.
Disclaimer: These are my own personal views and I am not NTSB or an aviation expert like many others here. Just a best guess from observing the data and my own experiences.