Because it fears that if it flies too high it will become vulnerable to missiles? Perhaps it flies under an inappropiate military protocol, Catch-22 style, and if you look at the mountain it crashed into it would have cleared it if it had flown 50 m higher. Paranoia is a killer!
Don’t know where the next mountain would have been in its path, but that is another story and irrelevant in the meantime.
And contrary to popular belief, helicopters don’t do “straight up” so great when loaded and especially at altitude. The call them “rotary wings” for a reason–some forwards speed helps a lot. Looks like they impacted at plenty of forward speed…
A very quick search says that the elevation in the area is 7,200 feet. The helicopter involved was a Bell 212, which has a maximum altitude of 12,900 feet. But I think the maximum out-of-ground effect hover altitude is 8,700 feet. So theoretically, it could have stopped and went straight up; but reports are that there was fog. Moist air is less dense than dry air, so the density altitude was probably closer to the terrain altitude. They’d be better off climbing with forward speed.
As a non-IFR rated helicopter pilot, here are my thoughts. The two-seat piston helicopters I’ve flown don’t have autopilot. Something like a Bell 212 probably does. But that airframe was 40 to 50 years old. (I looked up the serial number in the FAA database, and did not find it.) Did that particular aircraft have autopilot? If it did, was it working? The thing to remember about helicopters is that they’re inherently unstable. Also, the pilot must make constant, minute control inputs to keep it in balance. You can’t keep up with it if you think about it. You make the inputs through muscle memory. And muscle memory is strongly dependent upon reliable data from the pilot’s Mk.I Optical sensors. Entering IMC in an unstable aircraft probably isn’t a good idea… even if it does have autopilot.
212s definitely do NOT have autopilot unless really really refitted. It’s basically a fancy Huey. And they’re slightly limited by being dual turbine–nice if one fails, but less performance than a 205 as I understand it.
I was making an assumption based on ‘corporate’ helicopters. Again: I flew (and hope to have money to fly again) little piston-powered helicopters.
Instead of paying money to fly them why not earn it. I heard Iran has a new job opening for a helicopter pilot.
Tempting… But I don’t think my wife and the cats would let me.
It is typical EVERYBODY policy.
On a perhaps related note, I flew from Gibratar to Heathrow to Seattle today and security was over the top at all three airports–variously, extra scans, dogs, repeat pat-downs, swabs, shoes off, lots of personnel in evidence. In Seattle, we were told the checked bags were undergoing additional screening and it was over an hour from the first bag from our flight hitting the belt to the last one. Bags appeared in dribs and drabs with long pauses between clumps.
Small news story with a brief update on the latest events:
First VP becomes acting President per the Iranian Constitution, with an election to follow in a few weeks (for a loose definition of “election,” of course) to formally fill the office.
The images I’ve seen don’t have the characteristic fin forward of the mast that early autopilot-capable 212s did—it looks like this—but that was later deemed unnecessary, so who knows? I’m not sure how easy it is to tell that visually from the antennas for the various IFR equipment (see the “Avionics” section here). If not… honestly “if so,” too, really… it does seem the definition of “inexcusable” to fly into those conditions.
Sometimes a pilot is reluctant to say NO to an important client. Flying a VIP is a cushy and well paying job. You don’t want to annoy the client and risk losing the job.
That was a factor in Kobe Bryant’s crash. It would be even more of a factor flying the Iranian President. He can have a pilot that annoys or disappoints him arrested.
This time the pilot flew under bad conditions and it cost people their lives.
Not that I’ve shed any tears for that tyrant.
Here’s where the account came from, according to the Washington Post:
What I fail to understand is that apparently those VIPs value their own lives less than pilots do.
I daresay the VIPs have little to no understanding of the risks involved, at least as compared to the pilot.
To say nothing of the “You’re the hired help and will do as I say!” attitude.
But why don’t they listen to the person who by far has the most authority to assess the risks? I mean, I could be Emperor of the Universe, but if my copter pilot tells me “there’s thick fog ahead in the mountains and we better don’t fly”, I sure as hell would take their advice.
Ordinary people take small risks to their life every single day like jaywalking, driving too fast, or even talking to a stranger. A world leader takes many times that many risks. When an expert tells us something isn’t safe, it is almost instinctive (yet folly) to access that risk the same way we do our everyday risks.
I believe this is really the major factor in many of these accidents. VIPs have a totally different perspective than pilots, generally being obsessed with getting to where they need to be. If they’re authoritarian types as many of them undoubtedly are, they will have little respect for the opinion of the “hired help”.
To be fair, we don’t really know if that was the case here. The bad weather may have been unexpected. There may also have been pilot error, which in heavy fog in mountainous terrain could be deadly.
Because some people have difficulty acknowledging that anyone has more authority in any matter then they themselves claim to have, reality be damned.
These are people who truly believe “I’m the boss and what I say goes” applies to things that give zero shits about their authority, like gravity or momentum.
The kind of people who actually believe they can command the tide to recede.