Japanese AW139 down

[TheGreenGoblin]

I was looking at this video which purports to be a successful landing after a tail rotor failure. I am no expert but this looks like a stuck pedal. What do the cognoscenti think?



Whatever the case, good work by the pilot methinks.

As for tail rotor failure I guess it depends on the circumstances, and phase of flight, power setting and forward speed coupled with the pilot's level of skill and training as to determining whether the situation was salvable. One only has to think of the Leicester City Accident to see a situation that was probably impossible for any pilot to recover from.

[Seenenough]

There is an animated video on Youtube titled-Tailrotor Loss-Art of Flight,Ep 2-Arma2 & Arma 3 which describes the situation quite well.

It seems that this video is part of a training syllabus for US Army pilots.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Altitude and forward speed seem to be the assets that may help the skillful and trained pilot in the case of tail rotor loss. Sadly tail rotor strikes are most likely to occur at low speed and low altitude.

Here a commercial pilot gets the approach/speed profile all wrong and encounters LTE (although I suspected initially that the aircraft's tail rotor may have clipped a tree) with serious consequences for him and the student owner of the machine. Waving at the person taking the film might not have been the best idea as the approach went to hell.



I note that this is Boac's least favoured video YoutTube maker...

[Boac]

Altitude and forward speed seem to be the assets that may help the skillful and trained pilot in the case of tail rotor loss

- that's the relatively easy bit. The difficult bit is the return to Mother Earth - zero altitude and hopefully not too much speed

[TheGreenGoblin]

Altitude and forward speed seem to be the assets that may help the skillful and trained pilot in the case of tail rotor loss

- that's the relatively easy bit. The difficult bit is the return to Mother Earth - zero altitude and hopefully not too much speed

True!

Trying to run on at too high a speed is enough to shake any man's Martini....

[llondel]

that's the relatively easy bit. The difficult bit is the return to Mother Earth - zero altitude and hopefully not too much speed

Flying is easy, it's the landings that are difficult.