HELICOPTER OPS: GEORGE TONKING
While sitting quietly in my office doing admin recently, I got a panicked call from one of my pilots, Carl Nicholl. Something about an engine failure in-flight… Trying to limp back to Grand Central… I grabbed my flight gear, seconded a crew member and tore downstairs to a Robbie resting out on the pad. AT FIRST GLANCE, worldwide statistics would have you believe that helicopter flying is inherently safe, compared to walking across the street, which is technically the most dangerous thing you could do! In South Africa, however, our accident stats seem to indicate that both general aviation, and light helicopter flying in particular, is becoming more dangerous.
intensively for our particular high-pressure operational environment. One of those pilots was Carl, who started out, as so many do, with an innate love for flying machines. From flying radio-control models, to drones, he finally became a commercial helicopter pilot, with lots of input from both me and a few of my fellow pilots in the industry.
you basically fall out of the sk y
When training to be a pilot you prepare for every emergency situation imaginable, but never expect to put that training into actual practice. In the security flying industry, we also realised that we would need to train pilots more
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May 2021
In the interest of aviation safety, I asked him to share his in-flight emergency account.
“It all started out as a normal Monday morning, with an ops flight planned from the Ultimate Heliport, over Pretoria and back home in a Robinson R44 Raven II. But after only thirty
