I have to say that I disagree about it being “marginal” 4-person aircraft. A Raven II is an excellent machine and I’ve done well with 4 people on board — for BASIC helicopter operations. Aerial photo work is not basic; neither is high altitude operations. Of course, if you put four fatties on board, you’re just looking for trouble, no matter what the mission is.

Out of CG, too heavy, too high, too slow, following a race (skateboards on a downhill winding mountain road). Lower hour pilot with a CFI (low hour CFI) and 2 passengers with film crew gear.

I am a 500 hr commercial pilot with most of my time in an R44. I recently did a slow & low Video flight over a Metropolitan city, circling buildings for an hour and I was quite uncomfortable!

As an R44 pilot, we have to remember it is fantastic 2 person helicopter, useful 3 person and often times MARGINAL 4 person aircraft. We as pilots must have the self confidence to tell our passengers that “we just can’t do it”! Often times for me it has meant leaving a person behind or having additional fuel stops to keep the fuel weight down.

I don’t agree with that statement. It’s true up to a point, but when going at speeds above cruising speed (which is well over ETL), up towards vne for example, the power can run out, thus more power can still be required at speeds above ETL.

I admit that in the beginning I was a lot less likely to say no than I am now. Although I’ve never really asked to do any seriously crazy maneuvers, I’m often asked to take on extra “observers” to fill my empty seats. A regular client, who booked 11 photo flights over a period of four days last month, tried to do this to me again. On 5 of the 11 flights, I would have been over max gross weight — and then he wants me to MANEUVER like that? I said no and cut the passenger load to just two on all flights. As this gig was also mostly over water, I was very glad I did. The helicopter performed admirably and I felt a lot less stress knowing I had plenty of power for what I’d likely need to do.

The trouble is, even if we say no, the hungry pilot will say yes. And then we have accident reports like this one, which the photographers don’t know anything about. Maybe we need to come up with an acknowledgment of risk form that they need to read and sign before flying with us. Sounds like a good project for this winter.

Next time that guy calls you, tell him that if he wants to be only 20 feet off the water, he should hire a tall boat.

The pilot had less than 100 hours of helicopter time. The CFI with him had only a little over 500 hours and had received his R44 endorsement — which required only 10 hours of dual time in R44s — less than A WEEK before the accident. Robinson recommends that a pilot have 500 hours of helicopter time, including at least 100 hours in the model of helicopter flown. Neither pilot had anything close to that.

While I realize that being “someone close” to one of these people gives you a reason to stick up for them and their judgment, you can’t argue the facts — or the conclusions of the NTSB experts who investigated the accident.

It’s unfortunate that this accident occurred and I hope no one was permanently injured in it.

I present the facts of this case in my blog simply because I learned a lesson from what happened — mainly that it’s important to check out of ground effect hover performance before a flight like this — and I want other pilots to learn, too.

As for the client not knowing the date of the accident, remember that he wasn’t “someone close” to the people on board. He did provide enough information for me to find the case, read its details, and learn from it.