AAIB (Air Accident Investigation Branch) have issued a special bulletin dated today 14th February 2014
Valentine’s day, there will be many tears
In particular, the investigation will seek to determine why a situation arose that led to both the helicopter’s engines flaming out when 76 kg of fuel remained in the fuel tank group, why no emergency radio transmission was received from the pilot and why, following the double engine failure, an autorotative descent and flare recovery was not achieved.
Link to special bulletin web page and PDF
Special Bulletin: S2/2014 – Eurocopter EC135 T2+, G-SPAO
I posted twice on this topic so I will continue to completion.
Posted by Tim
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
So the fuel gong was being banged and his supply tanks were (1)fumes / (2)near empty – but he had 75 kg in the main tank – it doesn’t say if there’s an auto top up or one has to manually transfer – one has to wonder about incapacity/distraction particularly as it would appear an autorotate was not attempted.
Wow .. BBC blame “the engines” PPRune is clogged with posts both on the Glasgow and EC135 threads – this one is set to run a while yet….. best stand back.
“best stand back”
Exactly my feeling too. Mostly because speculation on the net is not what bereaved families need on a regular basis. Lets await developments.
A sad and mysterious case.
Forward and aft transfer pumps switched to OFF, with the two supply tanks empty and low fuel warnings received? Interesting.
It brings to mind this incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Phoenix_news_helicopter_collision
“…the probable cause of this accident was both pilots’ failure to see and avoid the other helicopter. Contributing to this failure was the pilots’ responsibility to perform reporting and visual tracking duties to support their station’s [electronic news gathering] operation. Contributing to the accident was the lack of formal procedures for Phoenix-area ENG pilots to follow regarding the conduct of these operations.”
After reading the report through a couple of times I think the bereaved are going to have to prepare themselves for some more bad news: fuel starvation due to pilot error, brought about loss of situational awareness *inside* the cockpit, possibly exacerbated by the use of night vision goggles, and or lack of adequate training. Seems fairly cut and dry, the only question is why.
Fuel aboard, 77kg, was below required minimum of 85kg Final Reserve Fuel required for night flying – already something wrong. “The fuel pump switches were examined at the accident site and it was found that the No 1 and No 2 prime pump switches (PRIME I and II) were set to the ON position and the fore and aft transfer pump (XFER F and A) switches were set to the OFF position.”
In general aviation, fuel starvation remains the primary cause of fatal accidents, as unlikely as that may seem to the non-flying public, and as unnecessary as it should be. There’s a lot to do flying x-country at night just keeping the shiny side up without a copilot to help manage tasks like managing the fuel – especially if inboard visibility is restricted by the use of NVG’s or other factors.
If I were to speculate, I might wonder how well adapted this particular aircraft’s cockpit controls were to the use of NVG’s, or how adequate pilot training was.
The pilot seems to have been very experienced: 5,592 hours on his log book (of which 646 hours were on type), Last 90 days – 38 hours, Last 28 days – 19 hours. However it remains unreported how much experience he had flying at night using NVG’s – a very important number.
In an earlier life I spent a lot of time as a green clad passenger of the 160th SOAR ‘Nightstalkers’ riding ‘outboard’ on Hughes MH-6’s at night, low level, and with everyone wearing ‘nods’. Thrilling stuff, zooming around rooftop height in a greenlit world. The fact that I could have that experience over and over again had everything to do with the fact that the pilot at my left elbow with his hands on the controls was better at his job than anyone else in the business – and nobody was shooting real bullets at us lucky for me.
My condolences to the bereaved,
W^3
The pilot received two red “low fuel” alerts, one for each of the two supply tanks. The remaining fuel in the main tank is kind of irrelevant as it’s what you have in the supply tanks that counts as they feed the engine. The red low fuel warning gives a 10 minutes to land window. Instrument display data SHOULD have shown the two supply tanks reducing in fuel load towards empty. Pilot also received warnings about low rotor rpm’s. Pilot was already below the fuel level reserve of 85 kilo minimum that he is instructed to land with. There was an instrument display failure as yet unspecified that may relate to fuel display data. However the warnings that did display including audio were effectively instructing him to land. Auto eol not attempted seemingly. There are no timeline intervals available as yet as to time between warnings, engines flaming out, etc All difficult to comprehend. More work for aaib to do but HF is already an inescapable theme for analysis.
” It then flew to Dalkeith, Midlothian, about 38 nm east
of GCH, where it carried out a non-urgent task.”
Quite a long way to fly there and back for a non-urgent task. Who decided this task should be carried out from such a distant base?
It was the pilot’s decision on whether to accept a request.