R22 Incident/Crash due to drone encounter in Charleston, SC

Landis said:
While airspace-wise the drone could have been legal, 2 other parameters were likely violated: must remain within line-of-sight and must not interfere with manned aircraft.
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100% correct.


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tomokc said:
I agree, the southern end of the island appears very remote, but the story described the crash site as “near Daniel Island Drive and Village Crossing Drive.” That’s the suburban neighborhood.
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Indeed it does, I missed that when I posted.

In my defense, 3 paragraphs above that the it says "The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed Thursday that a Robinson R22 helicopter struck a tree and crash landed near the southern tip [emphasis mine] of the island around 2 p.m."

Additionally, the intersection reported is basically at the end of the shown development (depending on how old the images are) so it's possible the officers would have reported near that location out of convenience.

It will be interesting to find out exactly where it crashed and if the circumstances are accurate.
 
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Some background - most of Daniel Island is built of dredged silt from Charleston harbor (discussion for another day & forum), so a good portion of the South end of the Island can’t be developed at all. The attached image is accurate in terms of current development and the highlighted circle is an approximate position of the crash.

I’m adding this because as several have said, the accuracy of the description of the drone doesn’t sit well with me. Not saying it’s not true, just bothers me a little. Not a helo guy, but if I were instructing at low enough altitude and position to be in close conflict with a trees, while the outside scan is vital, unless the drone was really close to the helo, seems like identification would be unlikely. That said, the Phantom is pretty easy to ID and the most common drone in the market.

Also, to give you an idea of the area and who might be operating, the closest houses are well North of a million bucks. Could easily see this being an incident with a kid or young person who thought it would be funny to fly close to the helo and after what happened, ran scared [emoji90]-less. Just my guess.


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tomokc said:
Not buying it. An instructional flight so close to the surface that the helo impacted “a brush or small tree” (yet adjacent to a residential neighborhood), and they’re blaming it on a drone despite a total lack of evidence?
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Yeah I'd be skeptical too. You just ruined your career before it even got started flying too close to the ground - what's the best way to save yourself? Drone in your airspace since nobody will ever be able to confirm it.
 
EAD said:
Confined space operations are a testing requirement on the Rotorcraft-Helicopter PTS even at the private pilot level. Looking at Daniel Island with satellite view on google maps, their being there doesn't seem too far fetched
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I agreed with this.

As for the intersection question I have 2 thoughts. First, on Google Maps, the next intersection south isn’t named. Triple Tail Ln doesn’t go through to DI Dr. “Near” could just be relative. Second, the mid-air could have occurred south of the crash site (red circle) and they turned north. I’d rather crash closer to people than in the trees and have nobody find me for 8 hrs. Also, that really straight east-west-ish line on the south side (turns north) appears to be water. There doesn’t appear to be easy access to that south side. Definitely didn’t want to go south.

If the CFI SA and ADM was that good, bravo. If it was luck, well, I’d rather be lucky than good.
 
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