I know how hard it would have been to escape the helicopter crash in NYC | Hacker News Reader

I know how hard it would have been to escape the helicopter crash in NYC

thedrive.com

62 pointsErlangolem47 comments

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if they banned sightseeing helicopter flights entirely. They were already banned from overflying Manhattan decades ago after a particularly fatal crash, and serious crashes continue at an average rate of one per year, including one in 2009 that killed nine.

The most unappreciated aspect of the helicopters' impact, though, is the noise. They ruin the possibility for enjoyment of the waterfront for a several block radius around every pier that they use. When you run or bike past the piers along the waterfront you have to stop your conversation, they're that loud. And the combustion vapors they're giving off aren't pleasant either.

It really would contribute to the greater safety and enjoyment of all if they fully got rid of these flights. At least get their launch sites away from Manhattan, where they spoil the peaceful enjoyment of huge swaths of public waterfront.

Keep in mind that not every helicopter spoiling your waterfront is sightseeing. Public safety, medical, and even private travel helicopter flights are very common in New York, so if you ban sightseeing you’re still only part of the way there. I’d suggest that it’s really just the size of NYC causing the annoyance that you experience.

Look at the bright side: they aren’t Hueys. You’d probably lose your mind if a squadron of angry Hueys thumped up the FDR on the deck. At least the average 206 or Eurocopter you’d see is designed to be somewhat reasonable.

Private travel to/from Manhattan should be banned as well, for the same reasons.

As for public safety flights, e.g. police helicopters, they smartly launch from less populated parts of other boroughs, where noise pollution isn't as big of a problem and land is more available. As for medical flights, I don't think there are any that take off from or land in Manhattan. It just doesn't make sense. There aren't helipads near any hospitals that I know of, nor any space to put them, and there's no way you're going to safely land a helicopter on a street to load up a patient. We've already got several world-class hospitals in Manhattan anyway, so a quick ambulance drive is all it takes.

And as for the size of NYC, yes, there's 2 million people who live here in Manhattan full time and then a good deal more than that during the workday. So it's paramount to allocate our scarce resources in a way that maximizes the public good. Spoiling the pleasant enjoyment of so much prime waterfront real estate just for some helicopter flights doesn't make sense and isn't the best allocation of limited resources.

A major use of helipads is transport from small hospitals to larger institutions.

I guess there are lots of big hospitals outside of NYC proper though.

> Private travel to/from Manhattan should be banned as well

I suspect this is more broad than you intended, but you'd probably find support for it as well.

In context, it takes a very uncharitable reading to assume I was referring to anything other than helicopter travel.

speaking for the OP, it was a joke. Unless he was proposing a remake of 1981 classic film.

I mean, there's a recurring discussion on HN about eg congestion pricing in Manhattan. If you were to float a proposal that no private cars be allowed into Manhattan anymore (just buses, licensed taxis and delivery vehicles), a reasonable fraction of Manhattanites would be in favor.

Indeed, almost all flight traffic over the city of Paris is prohibited.

Exceptions exist fo military and medevac. Not sure if they even have police helicopters.

Has been since the world war.

It results in some interesting flight paths for jetliners.

It's a common misconception: not all flights are forbidden.

Yes, almost all flights are forbidden above Paris, unless you're above 2000m (6600 ft) and you're a regular airliner or military transport...

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...

> The most unappreciated aspect of the helicopters' impact, though, is the noise. They ruin the possibility for enjoyment of the waterfront for a several block radius around every pier that they use.

Agreed. I wish helicopters were banned or only allowed on high rise helipads. They are so loud that it hurts your ears if they are anywhere near your vicinity. Noise pollution should be a consideration as any form of pollution. Also, if helicopters fly by your building, you can feel it. It actually vibrates the building. It really gets on your nerves and affects your quality of life.

Helicopters and horse buggies in central park are two things we don't need in nyc.

For many of the reasons mentioned in this article the FAA has now banned certain types of these “doors off photo flights.”

This sort of thing is intended for professionals with extensive training on the harnesses—in some cases including actual dunk tank training where you’re actually thrown in the water and need to escape (with safety divers present).

A lot of companies then started cutting corners and just pulling people off the street and showing them a “safety video” and sending them up. No way is that adequate training and the episode last weekend sadly demonstrates that fact.

Had it not been for the harness design and lack of adequate training it’s extremely likely everyone would have walked a way a bit wet and cold but otherwise unharmed.

I did this training when I was a cadet in Air Training Corps. It petrified me, I did the standard dunk but bailed before the dunk and inversion attempt. I am not a strong swimmer, they had rescue divers there, no way.

Being strapped into a container slowly filling with water rushing in through various orifices is a horrible feeling. And having to wait for the water to stop rushing in before unstrapping.

And I was in an indoor pool. Those poor people.

I worked with a USN heli pilot & commander. They had to go repeated tests where they were strapped into a helicopter body, blindfolded, and then it was dropped and inverted into a pool. They had safety divers immediately in the water, but to pass, they needed to get unstrapped, find their way out of the vehicle, and to the surface.

From amateur auto racing, I also know that harness and latch design is critical to being able to escape in an emergency. Again, we practice getting out of the vehicle quickly.

A video is just not even close to what would actually help the passengers. Note that the pilot escaped ok, but no passengers did. Might as well just take their money and say "good luck".

I have done a few doors off flights in LA and I certainly would not have been able to operate the harness in an emergency. Either the (hopefully well trained) pilot should be able to release or there must be a big emergency button that's hard to miss (but also not pressed by accident).

Ignoring the absolute legality of it, I can't believe their insurance in any way shape or form allowed this to go on.

I've been on helicopters multiple times flying out to oil rigs. Never far enough to have to get the certificate via the dunk test, but every single time we wore a dry suit and watched the safety briefing.

Every time.

It's been a few decades, but to this day every time I'm in an aircraft, at take off and landing I have one hand on the buckle, one arm pointing at the escape route, feet tucked under, belt pulled tight across my hips, head pressed back.

This article reads all-too-true, and brings back many memories. Fortunately none of my memories are of tragedies like this, but they do tell me that accidents are by their very nature unpredictable. We do what we can to be prepared.

Sometimes it's not enough.

Interesting read. I have taken the full dunk tank helicopter egress training for working on offshore oil rigs. We didn't have the tethered harness bit, but did have to open a door/hatch and climb out while upside-down underwater. I think there may have been a quick-release seat belt, but I'm not completely sure.

That training didn't bother me much, I think mostly because I had grown up swimming daily, have been surfing, snorkeling, and SCUBA diving, and am pretty comfortable and confident in the water. It took a while for me to realize that many people are deeply terrified of being dunked in water, and may panic and do any number of strange things. It makes me wonder if any reasonable amount of training can really make you ready for that. Or if I would also be in way over my head [sic] in an actual crash - it was occasionally pointed out that in actual over-water helicopter crashes, usually everyone dies regardless of what sort of training is involved.

It does make it seem a bit crazy that they're flying random tourists around like this without even a practice run at how to detach their harness tether or knowing whether they can even swim at all. The release method being to pull out some sort of knife that's supposedly attached to the harness and use it to cut the tether seems a bit crazy too. The author has no idea exactly what kind of knife or exactly where it is, which says a lot about their pre-flight training. How many people will fumble the knife, cut themselves, stab random things, etc trying to cut a tether while in a rapidly sinking helicopter? They should have some sort of quick-release that's easy to grab and uses one simple motion, and that they practice releasing several times.

Expecting random customers to use a knife to free themselves when either in unexpected freefall or underwater without having ever tried it in training seems indeed highly insane.

Why not use normal safety belt buckles, plus ideally an electronic autorelease system that the pilot can trigger?

The main purpose of the harnesses, which is tested and used on every single flight, is to prevent the passengers from becoming free of the harness and free of the helicopter. It was only through a highly unlikely combination of both a loss of power and a failure of the float system that they would ever need to release the harness.

You don't not wear your seatbelt in case it becomes jammed when you drive into a lake - that just doesn't happen very often. But people get in normal, on-road car accidents all the time: it would be silly to optimize either of these systems for easy release when the main purpose is for them not to release.

Seatbelts are optimized for easy release. They have a big red button and using it is muscle memory for the vast majority of people who ride in cars. This is good because there are a lot of conceivable situations in which one might need to exit a car in a hurry. It's possible that a seatbelt or its release might cause problems in some situations, but they're designed to make this as unlikely as possible.

Strapping people into an aircraft such that they effectively cannot release themselves in any emergency is completely insane, and in this case it's a decision that led to 5 deaths. If they can't design secure harnesses that can also be easily released, or can't trust customers with such a responsibility, then they shouldn't be running open-door flights at all.

This is why the USAF has mandatory underwater egress training in which aspiring helo crewmembers are dunked, inverted, and taught how to untether and escape from inside a simulated fuselage.

What kind of a shoddy company lets a passenger harness TURN OFF FUEL TO THE ENGINES?

Is that insane to anyone else?

This was discussed on a recent "No Agenda" Podcast. Adam Curry is licensed to fly helicopters and claims to have flown this model. He is insistent that this explanation is wrong, that the lever pictured controls ignition retard and is easily overridden by controls on the stick the pilot uses to control the aircraft.

It makes no sense to me that there would be a fuel shutoff in reach of a passenger that could cause the aircraft to crash. (Imagine telling passengers "whatever you do,, don't pull this lever or we'll all die.")

With the small size of a helicopter and passengers in the front seat, they are certainly in range of many controls which could have that effect.

I'm not familiar with the particular model of aircraft that crashed. But I've ridden in a cozy two-seater. As someone with zero piloting experience it seemed like it would have been easy to change all kinds of important controls, especially if it was an excited, inattentive person of the selfie snapping variety.

Why are these particular harnesses so user hostile? Boat harnesses are usually double action caribeners so there is no need for a knife.

People don't want to become unbuckled and fall out the aircraft. Falling out of a boat is far less scary (I've done it before and was able to easily swim to shore).

It would seem as though electric power could create a much safer helicopter. An electric motor powering the rotor with the engine acting as a generator much like a diesel locomotive. A smallish battery would give enough power to descend safely in case of engine failure.

You can descend safely with engine failure; it’s called autorotation. Sounds like they probably did so, but the floats were not properly inflated. Also a harness catching a fuel shutoff switch; bad. So many small things that can go wrong, compounding to fatalities.

You can even see, in captured footage, that it descends fine, and then starts to turn to its side due to the floats not being properly inflated.

https://twitter.com/JJmagers/status/972974463175286784 for the video.

Helicopters already descend safely during power loss with autorotation, which every pilot trains. The landing site, failure of a float, and doors off operation were bigger problems here, as well as the passengers not knowing how to rapidly get out of their harness.

From the look of it, the pilot actually did alright, and successfully autorotated to a landing he expected to work. The aircraft had other ideas.

The landing went fine. The helicopter was even fully intact following the landing, which is often not the case for helicopter crash landings.

It's just that there was no good plan for what would happen after a water landing. The pilot, with his greater familiarity with the restraints, was able to improvise, but no one else could.

You can fly a bit without power by simply doing autorotation.

Autorotation in a helicopter is just falling less quickly. The speed at which you fall is highly dependent on the weight of the aircraft in flight.

Which sounds weird to me since objects normally fall at the same speed (9.8 m/s^2) and I would have assumed that more weight results in more potential energy which gives you more kinetic energy in the wings to stop the plane smoothly, but you also have to stop more mass. So I would have thought the weight cancels out of the equation, but wikipedia confirmed it depends on weight (not stating whether the effect was positive or negative on fall speed).

I don't get whats the effect of weight and why, could someone with helicopter/physics background explain?

"objects normally fall at the same speed (9.8 m/s^2)"

That's ignoring air resistance, which in the case of flying machines is substantial!

In vacuum!

g (9.8 m/s^2) is an acceleration, not a speed. It's right there in the units. The actual terminal velocity of an object is meet when its wind resistance -- which is a force (acceleration with mass) with negative magnitude -- matches g. Until then, it will accelerate.

So, generally, the larger the surface-area-to-mass ratio of an object, the lower its terminal velocity. Aerodynamics also plays a part, of course. So, a lead feather will have a much higher terminal velocity than a real feather, due to the extra mass that the wind resistance is fighting against. Meanwhile, g is an acceleration so it affects all mass equally.

Here's a really cool video of a feather and bowling ball falling in vacuum together:

https://youtu.be/frZ9dN_ATew

Since aircraft rely on lift, which is also a force, to overcome gravity, minimizing weight is ideal. Gravity will affect all the mass equally. But the same lift force with double the mass will only be half as effective.

The helicopter people on this forum seem to conclude that the fall speed of heavier helicopters is slower:

https://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/484972-weight-vs-rod-autor...

Ah, I see where you were going now. That is interesting; never heard of it before. I agree with you, that at first glance it seems like the gain in potential energy would be countered by the increase in the lift force necessary.

Maybe there's some sort of flat efficiency loss going on, that is overcome by the higher energies present in the heavier scenarios? It does seem that everyone is in agreement that the heavier helicoptor would require more applied pitch. Which may not actually be desirable, given my impression that a pilot would attempt to burn the kinetic energy in the rotors to lift via pitching the blades right before landing.

Let me correct myself: "[...] fall at the same speed because they have the same acceleration (9.8 m/s^2)"

I would quite happily have myself bodily transported by a small fleet of drones, of the average Maxi- variety, appropriately tethered into a space suit, with perhaps one or two Over-drones there, just in case something happens with the swarm and I splash into the ocean .. on the other hand, maybe the Over-drones would be carrying supplies and setting up the BBQ on the base island, who knows .

Point I wanna make is, hell yeah there have to be better flying things on the horizon. Gimme my drone-fleet and proper space-suits, yo!

Why can't the harness be designed to open without a knife?

This is a harness designed for untrained civilians to hang out an open helicopter door. Accidentally realeasing and falling out is a higher probability event than crashes.

I'm not an expert, but it seems like harnesses are designed to be quite difficult to remove, as accidentally doing so (or the strong downwash turbulence of an open flight doing so) in an open-door flight would be almost certainly fatal. The knife is kept as an emergency alternative to allow for faster release than going through multiple buckles, not the primary method.

If I recall correctly, parachutes use a similar thing - in normal circumstances, you simply unbuckle after landing, but in a foliage or water landing, you can cut yourself out of the straps.

This was so horrifying to read. If only those three passengers hadn’t upgraded their flights... they’d still be alive.

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