San Antonio Police Helicopter Crash Video, Cockpit Audio & FLIR 2-19-04

This very dramatic video literally brings you inside the cockpit of a police helicopter as it loses power, and enters auto-rotation. Like so many of these videos we are often dependant on comments others have posted to learn more about what happened. Here is what I have learned.

Officers Edward Ramirez Jr and Mike Welborn had just launched their police helicopter, a Schweizer 333 turbine powered helicopter-configured to seat 3, to respond to a vehicle pursuit in the City of San Antonio. Their call sign is "Eagle or Blue Eagle." While both are pilots, only one of the officers would be at the controls when then engine quits. The second officer, occupying the TFO seat, puts out a mayday call and gives some quick verbal guidance to the PIC. According to the NTSB report the pilot in command had a total of 493 hours in helicopters.

Now I am going to go out on a limb and speculate a little, but here is how it seems to me. The PIC was still a pretty low time pilot (493) hours and it was night time, 0243 hours to be exact. While every agency is different, the PIC was likely paired up with a senior pilot (probably for an entire shift rotation) for his night time pilot orientation. Not only is flying at night time a whole different animal, but working police calls at night is really a different animal, requiring a significant amount of orientation and training beyond that of a day time patrol pilot.

So when you hear the primary voice on the tape giving the command(s)"come on auto.....auto"it sounds like someone who is already in somewhat of a position of authority, combined with urgency of the situation, adrenaline!

At the beginning of the tape you are looking through the opened FLIR camera, which was set to record not only the video seen through the camera, but also the cockpit conversation. The first thing you see are the city lights below, but notice the video image shifting back and forth. It has been explained to me, and it makes perfect sense, that this is the engine surging and about to fail (the engine surging with power would result in various torque settings on both the main and tail rotor, causing the nose of the helicopter to shift back and forth in forward flight.)

It was during this time that the TFO (senior pilot) told investigators that he looked over and saw the torque needle in the red, and asked the pilot if he had "over-torqued" the engine.

If you listen carfullyyou can hear the engine as it loses power and winds down. The beeping sound is the audible engine out warning horn in the cockpit. We will get to the NTSB's findings in a minute, but I will tell you now they found no fault with the pilot or his actions.

I have written a lot about auto-rotations on this site, and how they work every time, if performed correctly. This is a text book example of an auto rotation performed correctly that save the lives of both police officer/pilots.

A couple of things that I noticed on the tape. First, you don't really see any significant difference in the picture, other than a gradual right turn. Nothing too radical here. As long as all (or most) of the pitch is immediately removed from the blades (lowering collective)the helicopter continues to fly pretty normally. The only difference is that you are coming out of the sky and you are going to land in about 12-15 seconds (assuming a minimum altitude of 500' agl.)

The other thing I noticed is that you never hear the voice of the pilot. I will speculate again and say that the most likely reason is that the pilot was focusing 110% of his brain power on performing the auto, and that clicking the intercom button to verbalize anything would serve only to distract him from the task at hand. From the pilot's perspective the only thing that matters is performing the auto, everything else can wait.

Most experts agree that this auto was close to perfect until the bottom when power lines appeared in their flight path. The pilot reported to the NTSB that he pulled in some collective to avoid hitting the power lines. According to the NTSB however the helicopter did strike power lines and landed hard causing damage to the helicopter and minor injuries to both pilots.

Near the end of the recording the TFO shouts something similar to "Flare" "Flare." The flare is a vital component of the auto, it is what slows forward and vertical air speed and is normally entered into at about 50 feet agl. When I first heard the tape it certainly sound to me as though the TFO is shouting "flare." I did read one comment where someone purports that the TFO is shouting "Wire." I guess it doesn't matter at this point however as this was an outstanding job by both the TFO and the ever silent PIC.

Here are the NTSB's findings:

"The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:

The loss of engine power due to the axial movement of the compressor rotor blades contacting the compressor vanes resulting in a subsequent compressor stall. A contributing factor was the improper assembly of the compressor section during the engine overhaul by unknown maintenance personnel."