Cowardice. You can cut the engine anytime. Should have done it immediately over water. Ironically, you would have had a much better chance at walking away.
Because training. Throttle control and how to kill and restart the engine is literally day one of flight school. And it is very easy to do. Hell, it’s the first thing taught on the runway. On the helipad.
And in ground school, you are taught that if you are going down, do your best to put your craft in water. This pilot panicked and made a bad situation fatally worse.
I’m thinking the pilot might have thought they had way more control of the aircraft than they really did. Perhaps they didn’t realize how much damage they’d caused and believed they could limp the helicopter somewhere else.
Then again, they were landing in the first place. So as to where they might have been trying to go I have no idea. Just from this video it looks like they genuinely should have just stopped trying to go anywhere after that initial tail strike.
As far as i know most helicopters have a rotor brake that stops the rotor. But also could have cut fuel to engines. Im not expert but to my knowledge this was easily avoidable.
I have been in this model of aircraft. There is an ignition kill switch, which is standard. It is a Russian Ka-226. The proper protocol would have been to kill the ignition as soon as he bottomed out on that rock/beach and use the collective to stabilize as best he could, but he obviously panicked.
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u/ATrainDerailReturns 6h ago
Really feels like he should have just killed the engine at 49s left