Helicopter Low Level Flying, Chechnya style.
Filmed by a vehicle’s dash camera, the video below shows an Mi-8 Hip helicopter buzzing the cars on the Rostov-Baku highway, near Gudermes in Russia’s Chechen Republic, earlier in May.
As you can see the chopper flew just several meters above a barrier dividing the highway lanes as cars and other vehicles whizzed past.
Besides the risk of distracting drivers, with vehicles traveling on both sides, any failure or bad move could have had devastating effects. Still, this is not the first time we have seen videos of helicopters flying low over public roads and highways. In 2015, a clip emerged of a Mi-17 Hip helicopter buzzing the cars on a highway somewhere near Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth largest town, in the central-eastern part of the country. Few months ago, we published a video of an Mi-8 helicopter landing on a highway and blocking a truck convoy to ask directions somewhere in Kazakhstan.
In eastern Europe combat choppers train flying at low altitude using roads for navigation and masking.
So, if you are driving in Russia, Chechnya or Ukraine…beware of low flying helicopters!
H/T Giulio Cristante for the heads-up
