The tragic accident occurred when two plane, each operated by Sea World Helicopters, collided at about 2pm AEST yesterday.
One of the helicopters, carrying seven individuals, plunged to the bottom whereas the second, carrying six individuals, managed in some way to land.
Vision reveals the accident occurred when one of many helicopters was coming in to land and the opposite was taking off.
Richard de Crespigny, who has 45 years of flying expertise, together with 1000 hours of helicopter piloting, advised Today there may have been many the reason why the pilots didn’t see one another earlier than they collided.
“If you look at that video (of the crash) you can see the aircraft above the horizon, that looks fairly easy to see, if there are no distractions,” de Crespigny mentioned.
“But are there distractions?
“Is a passenger saying one thing? Is the plane misbehaving?
“Is something drawing the pilot’s view inside and he can’t look outside?”
Approaching plane may additionally play visible tips on a pilot’s eyes, de Crespigny mentioned.
“An aircraft … will start as being a dot on the windscreen and it then gets bigger and bigger in the same position, until it hits you,” he mentioned.
“The eye is not designed to see objects that are still, especially if the aircraft has got a painted skin that makes it sort of camouflaged.
“Were there distractions? Were the plane camouflaged within the airspace beneath? All these questions are nonetheless to be answered.”
Aviation authorities were helping pilots install equipment used to transmit position and altitude to big commercial aircraft, de Crespigny said.
However, choppers flying close to the ground relied on pilots seeing and avoiding other aircraft, he added.
de Crespigny praised the efforts of one of the pilots who managed to land their chopper on the ground after the collision.
Of the six in the helicopter which landed, five were taken with minor injuries to Gold Coast University Hospital and one person was physically uninjured.
“I feel the pilot who landed that plane after that mid-air collision did a wonderful job of touchdown on a tough floor safely and everybody received out.
“I think that looks like excellent piloting.”
