ULA Hard Landing Raises Concerns

Upper Limit Aviation, based in Utah, is under fire after a student was injured in a hard landing yesterday. The R22 was being flown by both an instructor and student when the engine failed. They came down hard, spreading the skids and slicing the tail boom. The student suffered a minor head injury and, luckily, [...]

R44 Hits Hanger in Germany

A 60-year-old pilot and his 46-year-old passenger are lucky to have walked away from a crash that did over $1.4M in damages. The only articles I’ve read are in German so I’m working with basic translation unfortunately. From what I understand they were on a “familiarization flight” and upon returning to the hanger they didn’t [...]

Pilot Uninjured After Hiller Crash

A Culpeper County man is lucky to have walked away uninjured after his Hiller UH-12E crashed in a field in Virginia last Friday. The pilot, Gene Kritter, said that a problem developed while he was flying from his home to a nearby farm to pick up fertilizer. It started when the aircraft’s engine began to [...]

OH58 Hard Landing

A Fort Bragg based OH-58D Kiowa helicopter had a hard landing yesterday near Lindon in North Carolina. The incident took place around 2 p.m. and a mechanical failure is being blamed. Although engine failure hasn’t been specifically mentioned, this sure looks like a forced auto-rotation to me. One witness was quoted as saying the engine [...]

Enstrom Ditches Off Miami

An Enstrom 280FX with one person on board suffered unknown engine problems on Sunday, forcing the pilot to ditch. The incident took place about 20 miles offshore of Miami, near Bimini Island. A private vessel was first on the scene followed by an MH-65 Dolphin. The male pilot was taken to shore on the Coast [...]

Double Engine Failure in AS332

A Super Puma AS332 experienced a double engine failure at 5,000′ recently while transporting Chancellor Merkel in Germany. The helicopter was ferrying her to campaign events when things got interesting. By remaining calm, and following the checklist, the pilots were able to restart both engines only 1,000′ from the ground. According to a few articles [...]