(experienced a mechanical issue with its transmission)
I was gonna say, that kind of failure could actually break a helicopter 🚁 apart
Never again!
Why the so-called ‘Jesus nut’ could be a key piece of evidence in Hudson River helicopter crash
https://nypost.com/2025/04/12/us-news/jesus-nut-could-be-key-clue-in-hudson-river-helicopter-crash/
According the AI in a Google query, models newer than 2016 cost $1.9 million. Brand new up to $2.5. A well-maintained model from 1993 can be as “low” as $800,000.
I can’t begin to imagine how much a private touring package for five passengers would cost. Fuel, insurance, maintenance…
The tail rotor support frame was completely missing. The helicopter fell like a stone. No rotation of the cabin from the main rotor torque.
The most likely failure was a sudden and violent jam in the transmission that took it from normal rotation speed to zero in a very short amount of time. That would cause huge counter torque that likely stressed the tail rotor/boom assembly to the failure point. Also break away of the the transmission/rotor assembly from the fuselage indicates shearing from both mounting points on top of the cabin.
Blancolerio has a very detailed explanation of this scenario too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Q8XuqlyMQ&t=323s
The “Jesus Nut” fell off, it’s the main nut that holds the top rotary wing on. If it fails, falls off, prepare to meet the Man in person. That’s why it’s called that.
Everything to do with a helicopter is 3-5x more expensive than an airplane of similar capabilities. Purchase, maintenance, fuel costs, rental, ... everything.
As I often say, vertical flight is hideously expensive. STOL is a far less expensive proposition in every case.
But “short” isn’t all that short. A Helio-Courier can take off in 350 feet, and a Pilatus Porter in 650, and those are exceptional cases (for any airplane that can carry a significant load).
VERTOL is only economically feasible if there’s no other option.
It’s a 20 year old chopper. I’m sure it’s had plenty of repairs. This is just kind of silly. I repaired my car last month, if some other part breaks in October it doesn’t mean anything about last month’s repair. Things break, it’s an imperfect world.
This story is everywhere and it is heartbreaking.
But a side thought, I really think it best not to take chances with your life for a thrilling ride and to me that is exactly what a helicopter is. The chance it could do this is there. I don’t care how slim the chance is, it IS there. It is not the same as a car or a train. To go up in the air in one of those things is no way out if something goes wrong.
People do this kind of thing all the time and never think of it in this way. Hike way up on a dangerous cliff to say ‘I climbed a cliff’ and fall off, go way under the ocean in a submarine...remember that one!
Why don’t people way the odds on this kind of thing. Big deal. You see from a height. I’ll do it watching tv. It’s too dangerous to risk myself and certainly not my loved ones.
If the tail rotor fails, the pilot has one chance to react and autorotate; if the main rotor blade transmission seizes, the bird becomes a bowling ball.
This worried me, not because of the problems but that they were not fixed in a timely and competent manner resulting in passengers being inconvenienced. It was a sign, IMHO, that the employees were not problem solvers but defaulted to a script which was, frankly, stupid.
At the time I said that if they could not figure out how to solve these small problems without things ending up in a headline causing story that I worried about their ability to keep their machines flying.
I was told that I was foolish because the maintenance was done by UNION people who would never allow an unsafe aircraft to fly. Also that my assuming that various and repeated glitches in their service was a sign of a corporate culture that was not interested in doing their basic job was nonsense.
Well... here we are.
Small problems repeatedly uncorrected are indeed signs of an enterprise that is about to crash.
NOTHING to do with it. It was a transmission problem or engine/transmission abrupt seizer.
The rotor detached. Not even going to begin to speculate on what caused it, but clearly whatever went wrong was absolutely catastrophic
Bad maintenance is the probable cause it seems. Anyone in military aviation understands that helicopters are very high maintenance and must be maintained. We learned that in Vietnam and probably in previous wars as well.
We’re guessing swashplate load-stress failure.
bttt
The two worst years for helicopter crashes in the last 20 (on record) in the US were 2013 and 2019. In each of those years there were 11 crashes involving fatalities.
In an average year, low (single digit) hundreds of Americans die in bathtub accidents (falls, drownings & scaldings).
In an average year, more than half a million Americans are transported to urgently-needed medical care in an air ambulance helicopter.
NTSB finds tour helicopter that crashed into Hudson River was not equipped with any flight recorders