Pop out floats on a 206BIII

This might be the one Mike was referring to... In January 2003, a
heilcopter on a tour in San Francisco was forced to ditch into the bay.
Jeremiah Cohick, who was one of the passengers in the helicopter, is
one of the people that was featured in Apple Computer's Switch
campaign. The first link has a few wide-angle pictures of the
helicopter sitting in the bay, and the second is Jeremiah's account of
what happened. There used to be some much better pictures on the web,
but I can't find them right now.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/01/14.7.shtml


Steve

Mike was kind enought we send me a couple of jpegs from the story in the link
above. Thanks, Mike!

The helicopter sits much lower in the water, relative to the floats, than I
would have thought. While the water conditions aren't that rough compared to
what San Fransisco Bay is capable of, there is some wave action and the Jet
Ranger looks like it's sitting there just fine.

I noted the reporter writing the article refered to the incident as a "crash."
All I can say is, if that's a crash, then any landing a helicopter makes also
qualifies as a crash. Looks to me like the pilot did a first class job
handling the emergency.

The "vast" majority of emergency autorotations (I'm assuming that's what this
was?) that I've seen on the news over the past 20 years ended in a roll over,
seperation of the tail boom, or some other significant damage to the aircraft
whether there were any injuries or not. This Jet Ranger looks to be completely
intact. Cudo's to the pilot!

Fly Safe,
Steve R.