HUGHES/HELICOPTER ASSOCS INC 369A near West Chester, PA — 2012-10-13

Probable cause

The pilot’s failure to see and avoid the preceding helicopter while maneuvering for landing. Contributing to the accident were the flight lead pilot’s inadequate preflight briefing and in-flight instruction to the formation pilots, which resulted in the loss of the formation flight's integrity and the pilots’ situational awareness within the flight. --- The other pilot’s failure to see and avoid the preceding helicopter while maneuvering for landing. Contributing to the accident were the flight lead pilot’s inadequate preflight briefing and in-flight instruction to the formation pilots, which resulted in the loss of the formation flight's integrity and the pilots’ situational awareness within the flight.

NTSB narrative

The formation flight of helicopters, designated Chalk 1 through 5, was en route to an annual airshow. The lead helicopter (Chalk 1) was on the left base leg of the traffic pattern at the nontower-controlled destination airport when the Chalk 3 helicopter pilot identified and announced that an airplane was on final approach for the landing runway. The Chalk 1 helicopter pilot announced that he was conducting a go-around and turned the helicopter left, inside the landing runway, and proceeded upwind. About the same time, the flight lead pilot, who was traveling in the trail position (Chalk 5), instructed the other helicopter pilots to "break left or land." The flight lead pilot's ambiguous instruction resulted in the breakdown of the formation flight's integrity. Instead of a flight of five helicopters and one airplane attempting to avoid conflict in the traffic pattern, each of the six individual aircraft were immediately placed in a position in which the pilots had to avoid potential collisions with the other aircraft. The Chalk 4 pilot subsequently lost sight of the Chalk 3 helicopter as the pilots of both helicopters were maneuvering for landing. The Chalk 4 helicopter pilot then landed the helicopter and was hover-taxiing to park when the helicopter collided with the Chalk 3 helicopter as its pilot was maneuvering it to land on the runway. Before the flight, the flight lead pilot presented briefing slides to the group of pilots; however, the slides did not provide any procedures for a loss of visual contact while flying in formation.

NTSB coding

• Midair collision · Maneuvering-hover
• Attention / Monitoring
• Planning / Preparation