Mineral basin heli crash

Trate D

Well-Known Member
My wife sent me this yesterday I/we were fairly worried. Her brother flys blackhawks and is in charge of maintenance scheduling on all of them at airport 2. Luckily this was a training mission so he wasn’t involved. He said they were going to assess the damage and get a recovery planned.
 

Hickey

Burn-barrel enthusiast
Supporting Member
I saw the a vid that @Hickey sent me and it's confusing how it happened. I thought it was only one, at first, and that it hit the tree. I assume one contacted the other? The snow kick-up was pretty intense on take-off. Glad to hear everyone was okay.
I can't even remember where I read it, but the first heli experienced white-out conditions when approaching the ground. The tail rotor struck ground and came apart, sending a blade toward the other heli, which forced it to emergency land.
 

Hickey

Burn-barrel enthusiast
Supporting Member

Bart

Registered User
Location
Arm Utah
Someone made a bad decision to try a landing there in 12" of the fluffiest new powder we've had all year. Who would have guessed it would have caused white out conditions. DOH
 

cruiseroutfit

Cruizah!
Moderator
Vendor
Location
Sandy, Ut
So how do you get helicopters out? Fix the one on site and fly it out? The one on it's side you stick on some big 8 wheel truck and do mineral basin in the spring?

Heavy lift helicopter could fly it out. I highly doubt they winter them there.

The Sikorsky CH-53E could lift them both at once. It's well within the Chinook CH-47F lift too.
 

haulinshine

Active Member
Heavy lift helicopter could fly it out. I highly doubt they winter them there.

The Sikorsky CH-53E could lift them both at once. It's well within the Chinook CH-47F lift too.
Yeah, they will most likely just have a team of Chinooks sling them out. Between the relative light weight of a Hawk (~16k) and the lift capacity of a hook with the lowish altitude and low ambient temps it isn't even a strain on them. I'm more surprised they screwed the pooch on the PL due to a white out, part of the training is low/no visibility landings. They have pretty high pucker factor but are normally really manageable as long as the crew chiefs and pilots are competent.
 
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