The Editor's Letter

Some years ago, while editor of a different publication, I asked a question: “Why don’t pilots take taxis?” This was related to an incident in which a pilot had landed his helicopter safely, shut down, and could have left the machine for the night. But he decided, for a variety of reasons, to take off again and try to get back to his home airfield. On this final part of the journey, flying allegedly at less than 100 feet and about 20 knots of forward speed, he crashed into a hillside and was killed. This comment came back to me in December last year, when a similar thing happened to me.

I was taking a Hughes 300 from Biggin Hill to Bournemouth for routine engineering. The weather at Biggin was good, and although the weather at Bournemouth was mediocre, having a 700 foot cloud base, it was ‘TAFed’ to clear.

On the way down through The Downs I talked to Farnborough, and discovered that most other aircraft flying were IMC, although one let down close to me at 1,000 feet... [Crimson1]