Fatal Alberta Helicopter Crash Report Advises Against Having Passengers During Risky Training - Beritaja

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A Transportation Safety Board study released Thursday recommends pilots deliberation doubly earlier practising perchance risky information manoeuvres pinch passengers aboard.

It comes aft a fatal chopper landing in cardinal Alberta claimed the life of a passenger.

The study examined a clang of a Bell Textron 206L-4, known arsenic a LongRanger, which knowledgeable a difficult landing successful July 2025 while conducting a backstage formation westbound of Red Deer pinch the aviator and 1 rider connected board.

They had made a 34-minute day formation from a upland lodge westbound of Sundre to a backstage farmland aerial portion adjacent Benalto successful Lacombe County, about 130 kilometres away.

The study said the aviator began practising autorotation — an emergency process typically utilized successful helicopters erstwhile the motor fails.

The first autorotation landing was uneventful, but the study said a 2nd effort resulted successful the chopper pitching upward, banking and past descending quickly earlier hitting the ground.

The passenger, a 54-year-old resident of Benalto, was killed, while the 63-year-old pilot, who was a resident of Lacombe County, was earnestly injured, suffering a caput injury.

The TSB said aesculapian aliases physiological factors, including fatigue, were not a facet starring to the difficult landing.

The aviator held a commercialized aviator licence — chopper and a backstage aviator licence — and astatine the clip of the crash, had logged about 3,500 hours of rotary-wing flying and about 1,800 hours flying that helicopter. His aesculapian testing was up to date.

The TSB said the aviator had completed his proficiency cheque successful that chopper successful the period earlier the crash, arsenic good arsenic maintained a regular training schedule, conducting recurrent training flights pinch a formation coach about each six months.

The training flights included chopper handling and believe autorotations. The TSB said he’d completed a training formation the time earlier his about caller proficiency cheque and, successful the 60 days starring up to the crash, had logged 33 formation hours successful the LongRanger.

The study said that while practising autorotations is basal to chopper aviator training, it’s riskier than regular flight, and exposing passengers to the elevated consequence “should beryllium cautiously considered” earlier pilots do it.

“In Canada, location are regulations restricting emergency training pinch passengers during commercialized operations but not during backstage operations,” the TSB study noted.

The study besides said neither personification connected committee wore a helmet. While not required, it said the aviator suffered a superior caput injury.

It said an article was published successful 2024 successful Transport Canada’s Aviation Safety Letter, advocating for the usage of a helmet for each chopper operations.

That article titled, Look Like Maverick, Wear Your Helmet! noted a precocious percent of chopper accidents hap astatine debased velocity during the hovering phase. It said that successful a rollover, the chopper’s main rotor blades onslaught surrounding obstacles aliases the crushed pinch specified tremendous unit that “the daze felt by the occupants is brutal.”

A helmet could besides protect the aviator during vertebrate strikes wherever the vertebrate smashes done the window, the article said.

The rider was wearing their seatbelt. However, the TSB said that pinch the measurement the chopper landed, the clang was not survivable for the rider owed to the unit and guidance of impact.

— With files from BERITAJA

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