May 29, 14:13 — An helicopter from the national aviation services lost control, crashed with a building and caught fire. There were 12 people in the aircraft, 6 from Panama and the other 6 from Chile’s police and security services.
When I heard about it my first thought was a problem with the tail rotor, without that controlling the helicopter is impossible. But then I google and google… and found a Chilean news paper that undercover it all… it turned out that the helicopter SAM-100 needed an urgent piece, actually 5 urgent pieces.
The public purchase order was emitted on May 27 and the deadline was set for June 4. This is public and accessible by everyone, you can check it here. UPDATE: According to the media it seems that Taysha Nurse, a Telemetro reporter was the first one to spot this, minutes after the crash, you can find a well detailed report with video an everything in the Telemetro website. Congrats for her good job.
Just in case they remove it, since at the moment the order was already tagged as cancel. I took a screen shot of it and all the other documents regarding the tender. (PDF format)
As you can see, the 5 parts that needed replacement were a trunnion assy, according to wikipedia a trunnion is “a cylindrical protrusion used as a mounting point”. If you google the part number (204-011-451-001) it will show up in the inventory of spare parts of “2004 Bell Helicopter Inventory Catalog” with the name of “TRUNNION ASSEMBLY, SWASHPLATE” according to the inventory, the helicopter has one.
The document suggest that this trunnion device is part of the rotor system, related links:
- http://www.zenithaviation.com/0410/pdf/Fixed_Wing_and_Rotor_Wing_Inventory.pdf
- http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=20200
- http://www.tercera.cl/contenido/25_16790_9.shtml
For what I can see on the net this helicopter should be grounded and not flying. This shows once again how things are done in this country, not security at all, not even inside the government itself. The government is in a really bad situation since they have to either prove that the helicopter was capable of flying even with this piece failing or damage (unlikely) or to accept the legal and ethic responsibilities of their stupidity irresponsibility.
As reported by la prensa, at least two heroes did their best like real Panamanians: Oduver Edwars and Osvaldo Smith were the guys that pulled the copilot out of the burning wreckage, they managed to get the copilot (only survivor) to a safe location and returned for the pilot, who died hours later at the hospital. Without this guys there will be no survivors and it seems the monkeys government just don’t care… no condecorations, honorific mention, thanks, nothing. They put their lives in danger, even got burned trying to help and no one cares…
My condolence to those injured and to the families of the victims.
