Great footage taken at the Helicopter pilot school in France. The video is a bit old and shows training procedures with the Aerospatiale SA 318C Alouette II including takeoffs, landings, and no flare autorotations. The guys flying are military pilots from the french Army.
Bernd van Doornick had some 22,000 total flying hours and is credited with more than 5,000 people rescued. September 1, 2007 marked his last flight at an air show, Bernd van Doornick showing the crowd gathered at Bex (Switzerland) what an Aerospatiale SA 315B Lama can do. The Lama holds to this day the absolute altitude record for all types of helicopters since 1972: 12,442 m. Quite an impressive helicopter, and with a skilled man at the controls this helo can do impressive stuff.
Blue Eagles display at Shoreham a decade ago. The Blue Eagles are one of few professional helicopter aerobatic teams in the world and they fly four Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopters as well as one Westland Lynx helicopter, famous for doing loops and rolls at the various air shows the team performs.
The helicopter in question is an Aerospatiale SA330 Puma. The pilot in question is French and if you have visited this site before, you probably know by now that if the words insane, helicopter, Puma and French are thrown in together it can only mean one thing: somewhere in Chad this French pilot had a very good time while at the same time entertaining the guys on the ground. Lucky guys!!! For the rest of us couch potatoes, well… at least we have one very impressive video with this truly crazy low level pass.
The French Air Force keeps a number of units in Chad. Because of the nature of the missions, the old Aerospatiale SA 330 Puma and Dassault Mirage F1 are stationed there. Pilots often call these “leisure missions” because they pretty much get to do stuff they wouldn’t normally do… like flying extremely low and generally having lots of fun. Check out the videos of the “Crazy Boys” over Chad.
