Follow Up – MD 600N Border Patrol Hard Landing
There have been some grumblings that the 600N isn’t exactly the best aircraft to perform autorotations in. I haven’t heard any real evidence of why that is though. When one of the Mcdonnel Douglas manufactured helicopters suffered a hard landing in San Diego just over a month ago, I wrote about the story here. From the pictures in that article you can’t tell just how close to disaster this incident really was. Thanks to one of my readers I can now share with you footage of what happened. This was filmed by another Border Patrol pilot. A factory CFI was on board along with a senior BP pilot which is probably fueling the question of how pilots with that much experience (especially an MD factory CFI) could have let this happen. Personally, I’m guessing this will ultimately be blamed on pilot error, not a manufacturer defect. That flare looks really late. Any other 600 pilots agree/disagree? That’s what the comments feature is for.
Thanks to cutter29 for the tip!
Tags: borderpatrol, crash, homeland, mcdonnell douglas, md600n
Were they even trying an auto? It looks like they were in a nose down attitude from the get go and lost too much altitude in the turn.
It is my understanding that the whole point of the exercise was to practice autos with the factory CFI on board.
flare left far too late