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Blackhawk Vortices leads to Cirrus Crash

You have to fool a lot of air to get an airplane to fly, particularly helicopters. That air often forms vortices, much like horizontal twisters, that tend to linger along the runways at airports. These invisible tornadoes can upset aircraft and have disastrous consequences. In this case, while the bird is a strike, at least…

You have to fool a lot of air to get an airplane to fly, particularly helicopters. That air often forms vortices, much like horizontal twisters, that tend to linger along the runways at airports. These invisible tornadoes can upset aircraft and have disastrous consequences. In this case, while the bird is a strike, at least the pilot escaped with his life.

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  1. Quartermaster

    Rotor wash is worse than the vortices coming off the end of the wings of a fixed wing aircraft. Normally you would get in the air and immediately moved to one side of the runway to avoid the vortices. In this case he should have allowed a few minutes for the roiled air to dissipate before launching.

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  2. ChrisP

    I question the timing. The Blackhawk was long gone.
    I say this as a former fixed-wing pilot and helicopter owner and pilot…

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  3. JoshO

    The way the plane cranked over it looked like some sort of vortices to me. I’ve always stayed away from the blackhawks when they come to the airport. The school where I learned lost a plane to a blackhawk’s vortex a few years before I started there in a similar situation. I’ve hit a vortex from a lager fixed wing business jet once but it wasn’t as strong of a force on the plane as what looks like happened in the video.

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  4. Al_in_Ottawa

    I’m not so sure. After the Cirrus crashes, look at the dust it raised. It just moves slowly and steadily to the right, no roiling, no dust devils, etc. No evidence of vortexes at all.

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