6 dead in southern W.Va. helicopter crash (wsaz.com)

Sad news. One report said that it was a UH-1B. Which means Restricted. How do you get six people in a UH-1B?

The aft bulkhead that stopped just forward of the transmission hellhole?

It had no hell-hole seats if that's what you're asking, it also didn't have the "jump" doors aft of the crew seats.

it's derivative the C-model - that was a fun machine.  Except for range it was better than the Cobra in the operational and flexibility sense.  Cobra was fun but always got more done with the C.

Then it could have been a "Donation" given instead of charging 

Among others give Huey rides. 

Belonged to MARPAT Aviation would be my bet.  They had a Huey Reunion going on this week

Marpat has a B model...I hope it wasn't Bossman. He used to be a regular over on the other forum...great guy. 

https://marpataviation.com/

N98F? That used to be a San Joaquin Malathion A/C - China Beach story ship

The doors in the sides

You mean apart from the 9 passenger seats in the back? 
you know it's a UH-1B and don't know 6 people can fit in it?
is this still a helicopter forum or is it just all med crew now? 

6 people in a Huey??? 2 up front, 4 in the back, plenty of room. You can do that in a B206L model any variant!!

RIP !!!:-(

That many paying passengers in a restricted category helicopter.

They were probably not paying pac.

Ever since the crash of that B-17 in Connecticut in October of 2019, people began taking a close, hard look at the issue of carrying passengers for hire in ex-military aircraft. Remember that B-17 had 13(!) people on board, and seven of them died.  There are those who want to prohibit these flights.

Do the regs permit military aircraft from being certificated and flown? Yes. Check out FAR 21.191. Can you carry passengers for hire in them? FAR 91.319 says definitely no. I won't cut/paste 91.319 (it's easy enough to find on faa.gov), but paying passengers are clearly not allowed. In the past, "Warbird" groups have gotten around this by claiming that the passengers were actually members of aircraft's crew, by way of their "donation" to the organization. It's been a gray area and loophole and, up until that B-17 crash, the FAA pretty much looked the other way. You can be sure that the issue is going to get a lot of scrutiny again. Watch this space!

but the performance might be lacking given the WAT.

Cannot carry 'passengers', but they can carry neccessary 'crew' to complete 133 work, even necessary 'ground crew'

You can't just read Part 91 and say you can't do this or that, the regulation being used to operate has sway. Part 133 or Part 137

https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=98F>

This is a very sad event, and I can't even imagine what the owner of Marpat is going through right now.

To start: The FAA does not define a "passenger."

Of course there are parts of the FAR's that allow for aircraft certified in other than the "Standard" airworthiness category to carry persons or necessary crewmembers. But...N98F was certified in the Experimental-Exhibition category, and was operating under Part 91, not 133 or 137.

We know that for certain non-commercial operations under Part 91, passengers can "share the cost" of aircraft operation. Indeed, according to an article published on Avweb, Marpat's website was offering 30-minute "rides" in exchange for fuel donations. They probably thought that this was legal. But...FAR 91.319 states:

(a) No person may operate an aircraft that has an experimental certificate -

      (1) For other than the purpose for which the certificate was issued; or

      (2) Carrying persons or property for compensation or hire.

Hmm. The loophole has always been that the "persons" on these warbird rides were not actual paying passengers but only made a donation "for fuel." These are the age-old questions: What is crew-member? What is a paying passenger? What is "compensation?" Are these "rides" legal or not? It is a gray area that is not clearly defined in the FAR's. Marpat and others have taken advantage of this loophole/gray area for a long time. Like i said in my earlier post, the FAA has always looked the other way on these flights. But with seven people killed in that B-17 in Connecticut and now six killed in West Virginia, the FAA won't look the other way anymore! If I were a gambling man (I'm not), I'd bet that soon, the FAA will specifically prohibit these types of warbird flights, and 91.319 will be rewritten.

No person may be carried in this aircraft during the exhibition of
the aircraft’s flight capabilities, performance, or unusual characteristics
at air shows, or for motion picture, television, or similar productions, unless essential for the purpose of the flight. (Refer to FAA Order 8900.1.) Persons may be carried during flights to and from any event or during proficiency/currency flying, limited to the design seating capacity of the aircraft and subject to the regulatory prohibition on compensation. 

To fly pax in warbirds legally there is an FAA exemption called the Living History Flight Experience (LHFE) exemption. The previouly mentioned B-17 was. Unfor tunately this B model was not under a LHFE program so there was zero oversight. Not a good place to be for those owners.

Just remember one thing boys and girls,after every take off there is going to be a landing of some sort.Hopefully that helicopter will hold together and you won't end up in a smoking hole.

You mean, like the 407 in Hawaii that had its TAIL BOOM FALL OFF in flight? OMG, how does that happen? Back in the bad old days, when preflighting a 206, us old timers would stick a finger on the gap between the fuselage and the tail boom. Then, reaching as far back as we could, we'd put some "pulsing" pressure on the boom, seeing if we could detect any movement at the attach points. Is this not taught anymore? Some things can be caught on preflight, some can't. Let us hope that whatever caused this old, historic UH-1B to crash was not something that could have been caught and prevented.

I remember those bad old days.I think that t/b inspection panel had to come off every 300 hours  to inspect the t/b attachment fittings with a 10 power magnifing glass and a bright light.But that was a while back for me.

They still do tailboom attach point checks on astars. Every mech should be looking at that area on all bolted up tailbooms regularly. It is a highly stressed point of the airframe.