O
UT OF NOWHERE, I HEARD THIS whoosh—almost like a change in pressure. Tere were no warning lights or indications. Trough the Bell 407’s windscreen, I could see we were spin-
ning faster and faster. I saw the blue of the ocean, then the red and brown of the lava field.We were spinning so fast I was being pushed forward. In those first moments, the normal world vanished.
Time seemed to compress, as if everything was happening all at once. I squeezed my transmit button and made one Mayday call and then another. In between, I switched to the intercom to tell my passengers to brace themselves. I remember them screaming. I leaned hard on the controls trying to get the heli-
copter straight and level. Training tells us that an uncon- trollable yaw to the right could indicate a loss of the drivetrain or tail-rotor components. I rolled the throttle into idle, hoping to remove torque
and arrest the yaw. Instead of continuing to flip and spin over and over, we started to slow down, helping to reduce the impact. Tankfully, my brain and muscles have retained the emergency procedures along with training and experience from more than 12 years and over 8,000 hours of commercial flying. Te front-seat passenger and I felt the first direct
impact with the shell crumpling as designed, helping to protect us and the four passengers in the rear. Ten the 407 came down on its skid with a thud, slid off, and fell onto its left side. Te next thing I recall was feeling panicked and yelling,
“Is everybody out? Are we on fire? Get the fire extinguisher.” Te passengers told investigators that I kept saying that over and over. We still had so much fuel on board. With a hot turbine engine that could catch something on fire, it was still a deadly situation. Fortunately, sometime after the fuselage came to rest, I had closed the fuel valve. Te 407’s fuel tanks held strong and didn’t burst or leak fuel.
Tim Hunter (above, left, and opposite) flies with former Paradise Helicopters chief pilot Travis French in one of the operator’s Bell 407s. 44 ROTOR MARCH 2024
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