Missing CG Hehicopter.

[bikedaft]

"Don't trust electronic navigation" might be OK for sailors but trusting electronics is an essential part of Instrument Flight Rules type blind flying. Hence tend to be also trusted to visual flight rules flying.
Ground Proximity warning Systems started life as a warning system linked to Radio Altimeter (read depth sounder to sailors) to warn of reducing altitude from the ground and various other warnings thrown in with a voice warning generator. This had limited value until they threw in GPS into a terrain map of the world showing mountains etc to warn of mountains ahead. In it s simplest form a pilot sees nothing until he gets a flashing warning and voice demand "terrain" or "pull up" . Now I have lost track of these devices but I was not aware that the terrain map in the GPWS was available as a navigation map. I guess the GPWS terrain map was really intended for airplanes and may have omitted small details like a rock and light house in the water. This may explain why the rock was not chartered. definitely a failure of the organising of navigation systems. ie it seems to me that navigation should have been by proper charts or proper electronic navigation.
Just a guess on my part possibly way out but this can happen too easily with the apparent ease of electronic navigation. olewill

But i thought (traditionally) that helo's avoid IFR ie avoid flying where they cannot see ie not in clouds

Sure sometimes they go up through cloud until they are above, but only come down eg over the sea

Only once have i seen a helo fly through cloud, and they slowly followed the hillside up to our location with the casualty (mountain rescue, it was a sea king). And there are other (fairly rare) occasions where they have done the same, never in training, but on a mountain rescue shout.

The S92's seem to be flown the same way as they flew the seakings ie very much avoiding flying through cloud (and avoiding turbulence ie wind near mountains, more)

But my helo experience (as a passenger) is limited to land, never seen them navigate over water, at least as a passenger

I have been told things by pilots like "we don't fly through cloud as FLIR cannot see though cloud" etc. (FLIR - forward looking infra red)

Will ask someone who gets more flights than me...

 

[maby]

...

Now I have lost track of these devices but I was not aware that the terrain map in the GPWS was available as a navigation map. ...
olewill

It is not - the GPWS on this helicopter was a separate system from the primary navigation and, as far as I know, did not have any visible map. The flight crew had five MFDs in front of them which could be configured to display, amongst other things, standard cartography similar to the electronic mapping we all have in our boats. Blackrock island is quite small and does not show up on the electronic maps when zoomed out, but it is there when zoomed in. The crew simply seem to have been complacent - they had an hour to prepare their approach and could easily have scanned along the programmed course looking for obstacles and other issues, but they seem to have just programmed it into the autopilot and sat back while it flew them into the ground. They set an altitude of 200 feet on a course that was going to take them past a lighthouse - even if it had not been sitting on top of a large lump of rock, that would seem to be cutting things a bit fine.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

As an aside, I worked a lot with BAS air unit to prepare maps for their "moving map" GPS systems. These were NOT part of the avionics fit, but were carried as additional equipment. The avionics set of an aircraft tends to be something that is rarely upgraded, as everything has to be tested and installed to very exacting standards - and I would never have been allowed to install custom maps in it - a necessity for Antarctica where there are no useful maps from suppliers like Jeppesen! But I have the impression that many pilots carry their own Garmin kit as it gives better situational awareness than the avionics does.