Kobe Bryant dead in helicopter crash

mryan75 said:
Really? Because it doesn't look that to me.
helicopter-crash-site.jpg
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Try looking at more than one picture. Like this one, for example:
crash1.jpg

Does this look like 20 or 30 feet to you?
 
Stan Cooper said:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...t-allowed-to-fly-by-instruments/#199dc1c026ea
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The media has really latched on to this like it actually means something. It doesn't mean squat. The vast majority of helicopter operations are VFR only. Even most medical helicopter operations are VFR Only operations. This only means the FAA has only certificated them for VFR operations. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not prevent those operators from initial and recurrent training for IMC conditions. This is quite common.

As for this accident, again, the VFR only certificate means squat. He was flying VFR. I believe the *only* reason he went IIMC is because he had so much speed, he had no options. At this point, either intentionally or through poor prior pilot technique, he went IIMC, apparently lost control, and the rest is sad history.
 
I don’t know, nothing wrong with a VFR only operation but I just think about the 8,200 hrs in helos and possibly never had any actual? That just doesn’t sit well with me. I’m a believer in the confidence that sustained, actual wx ops provides over a quick simulated IIMC scenario once a year.
 
Velocity173 said:
I don’t know, nothing wrong with a VFR only operation but I just think about the 8,200 hrs in helos and possibly never had any actual? That just doesn’t sit well with me. I’m a believer in the confidence that sustained, actual wx ops provides over a quick simulated IIMC scenario once a year.
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A fairly good size of the GA Part 135 helicopter pilots have never flown actual, unless they were prior military or prior fix wing.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
That’s where it ended up, but where’s the point of impact? It was going pretty fast, so it could have rolled down the hill quite a bit.
They should mention this in the preliminary report.
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the impact point was about 500’ away from the smoke. Contrary to what people say, the helicopter was moving both down and forward. We know it was also moving forward because you can hear the sound change on the doorbell video and there is a 500’ scar. Yes, he was also descending.

I’ve driven through this area in severe clear conditions and didn’t go full speed.
 
Salty said:
Yet another case where regulatory restrictions make things less safe.
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That’s almost always the case with the FAA. Look how they handle medications for things like anxiety or sleeping. They’d rather have exhausted and anxious pilots in the cockpit because they think these medications cause drowsiness. Well one thing that is for sure, not sleeping will cause drowsiness way more often.

Not trying to thread drift but we can only hope that one outcome to this trajegdy is not even more regulations!
 
SToL said:
That's never fun, but it's even less fun when your mechanic snores like a wounded water buffalo. Ask me how I know what a wounded water buffalo sounds like.
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Much needed thread drift warning- OK, since no one else asked (they just don’t care), I’ll bite. HTF do you know what a wounded water buffalo sounds like?
 
Some of the reports I've seen mentioned that the destination was actually not the location of the training camp, but Camarillo airport. Not sure what they base it on, but if those are true, they could've gone IFR. I looked it up on Airnav and Camarillo has IFR approaches, even a legacy VOR approach.
 
zaitcev said:
Some of the reports I've seen mentioned that the destination was actually not the location of the training camp, but Camarillo airport. Not sure what they base it on, but if those are true, they could've gone IFR. I looked it up on Airnav and Camarillo has IFR approaches, even a legacy VOR approach.
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The helicopter was being operated on a VFR charter, with a VFR pilot.
 
"20-30 feet from making it"

If you watch the whole NTSB news conference and you look at the picture @Weekend Warrior posted, it becomes obvious that the 20-30 feet of clearance was from that little wrinkle/ridge in the side of the much larger overall mountain. The aircraft was in a descending left turn and impacted (you can clearly see the impact point in the pictures) that ridge 20-30 feet below the top of that ridge. As they said in the NTSB news conference, they are NOT saying that if they'd been 20-30 feet higher they'd not have crashed...they might have just crashed somewhere else (e.g. on the next ridge line) on that same big mountain.
 
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Ryanb said:
LOL How do any of us know who’s right and who’s wrong? It’s all speculation at this point, bud.
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Can't speak for anyone else but I took the response as CNN was simply reporting on what an NTSB official said in the press conference when he talked about the impact location as being approximately 20-30ft below the peak of that particular hill but confusingly described that by saying they missed clearing the top of that hill by 20-30ft. I believe the NTSB later clarified that while the impact was 20-30ft below the peak of the hill, the hill in question is a small hill located in an area of several larger hills.
 
zaitcev said:
Some of the reports I've seen mentioned that the destination was actually not the location of the training camp, but Camarillo airport. Not sure what they base it on, but if those are true, they could've gone IFR. I looked it up on Airnav and Camarillo has IFR approaches, even a legacy VOR approach.
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I was being vectored around to the RNAV Y approach into Camarillo the moment the crash occurred. Unfortunately, the limitations on their operation and possibly the pilot's currency may have prevented that. If they were going to CMA given the conditions that I witnessed that day on the approach, there was going to be at least one more choke point on their route that is surrounded by mountains and was completely socked in. The chances of them making it to CMA under any definition of VFR was next to zero.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
Can't speak for anyone else but I took the response as CNN was simply reporting on what an NTSB official said in the press conference when he talked about the impact location as being approximately 20-30ft below the peak of that particular hill but confusingly described that by saying they missed clearing the top of that hill by 20-30ft. I believe the NTSB later clarified that while the impact was 20-30ft below the peak of the hill, the hill in question is a small hill located in an area of several larger hills.
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This investigation is ongoing, and they are sifting through lots of information. It will take weeks to narrow down and get a preliminary out in the public domain. Unfortunately the news media doesn't use aviation experts in their reporting and they tend to latch on to whatever they feel will make the best headline.
 
Doc Holliday said:
This investigation is ongoing, and they are sifting through lots of information. It will take weeks to narrow down and get a preliminary out in the public domain. Unfortunately the news media doesn't use aviation experts in their reporting and they tend to latch on to whatever they feel will make the best headline.
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Yeah but, mryan75 just told us that it's no longer all just speculation. Why do we have to wait weeks? Why don't we just ask him?

mryan75 said:
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It's been 30 years ago but I was flying what I assumed was a high pressure mission to get a acting Brigade Commander (My Battalion commander) to a meeting at Division headquarters. A sequence of events had our two UH-1's down and for some reason which he would normally be in. I was drafted as his new S1 (Adjutant) and PIC (Pilot in Command) in an AH-1. LTC Kyle was rated in a Cobra but not been current since Vietnam but a competent Aviator. The AH-1 was certified for single pilot operations and we often flew with crew chiefs and non rated individuals in the front seat just for weight and balance purposes.

We took off low level in special VFR on a route not unlike this flight. Kyle took the controls at level off, as I got on the map as he had no clue where we were going...two or three min later when transitioning from inside to outside we went into the clouds at 130 Knts...I immediately took the controls, transitioned, added power and climbed as we are all taught in the Army...never a descending turn! Kyle lite up a cigarette, and apologized for putting us in the clouds.

As we climbed through minimum obstruction altitude and within 10 sec of squawking 7700 Ramstein approach made contact on Guard offering assistance. Vectors and a partial PAR as we broke out VFR and resumed our flight to our Division headquarters. I tell this story as I am not sure that I could make this same transition today. I am sure I could, but even with training this was a significant event in my Aviation career...

The meeting was for a quarterly USR review (Unit Readiness report in the Army) and could have been rescheduled….Pressure to make flights can be a powerful thing.
 
Doc Holliday said:
This investigation is ongoing, and they are sifting through lots of information. It will take weeks to narrow down and get a preliminary out in the public domain. Unfortunately the news media doesn't use aviation experts in their reporting and they tend to latch on to whatever they feel will make the best headline.
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Yur preachin' to the choir doc'. But in this case, the speculation in question came from the fella that's actually doing the investigation you're speaking of. If the NTSB themselves said it, can we really blame the media for making a headline out of it?
 
Doc Holliday said:
This investigation is ongoing, and they are sifting through lots of information. It will take weeks to narrow down and get a preliminary out in the public domain. Unfortunately the news media doesn't use aviation experts in their reporting and they tend to latch on to whatever they feel will make the best headline.
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Lots of baloney here. The PIC made a rapid ascent, and then a rapid descent into the ground. No investigation will ever reveal why he did those things. The NTSB will make some sort of ruling no more based on reality than Star Wars, since they can't seem to say they don't know why he did what he did.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
the speculation in question came from the fella that's actually doing the investigation you're speaking of.
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I could be wrong, but I believe the NTSB's answer on the "20-30 feet" was to a specific question asked by a CNN reporter. Not a general or speculative comment by the NTSB.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
Yur preachin' to the choir doc'. But in this case, the speculation in question came from the fella that's actually doing the investigation you're speaking of. If the NTSB themselves said it, can we really blame the media for making a headline out of it?
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My point being that there is lots of information they're (NTSB) working through. As time goes by, several pieces will fall by the wayside, and even some new parts will emerge.
 
steingar said:
Lots of baloney here. The PIC made a rapid ascent, and then a rapid descent into the ground. No investigation will ever reveal why he did those things. The NTSB will make some sort of ruling no more based on reality than Star Wars, since they can't seem to say they don't know why he did what he did.
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And you don't know if your assertion is even true at this point. This is why investigations take time. The NTSB's job is not to provide a bunch of internet forums rapid responses, but rather sift and drill down looking for causal factors of the accident.

Your entertainment is not the concern of the NTSB. :rolleyes:
 
Juliet Hotel said:
CNN was simply reporting on what an NTSB official said in the press conference when he talked about the impact location as being approximately 20-30ft below the peak of that particular hill but confusingly described that by saying they missed clearing the top of that hill by 20-30ft.
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What happened was that CNN simply took out of context what an NTSB official said in trying to give a response to an inane question from an ignorant reporter.

They're good at that.
 
Pilawt said:
What happened was that CNN simply took out of context what an NTSB official said in trying to give a response to an inane question from an ignorant reporter.

They're good at that.
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THIS, thank you. oh, and also that mryan regurgitated what the news already said so he could pretend in his mind that he's right.
 
Pilawt said:
What happened was that CNN simply took out of context what an NTSB official said in trying to give a response to an inane question from an ignorant reporter.

They're good at that.
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Well fair enough then. I guess I'm just failing to see the point in making any kind of fuss that a for-profit news outlet took a quote out of context because they felt it would make a better headline. Seems kind of like getting upset because a bear pooped in the woods but that's just me.
 
steingar said:
The NTSB will make some sort of ruling
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...and one year later it will be something profound like "pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance from terrain"

-we're always told not to speculate and wait for the official findings.. fine, but they'll never actually know what was going on in the pilot's head or the full chain of events.. the best they can do is find the most likely thing that happened (Occam's razor and all that)..

-a big (but not only) part of why our US flying is so safe is less to do with the bureaucracy of our government bodies and enforcement of regulations, many of which were written decades ago, and more to do with the financial burden of lawsuits, loss of revenue, etc.

mryan75 said:
cunning play on words
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I guess you could say he's a cunning linguist


**AND yes.. the media coverage of this is total trash. People misquoting flight following requests, etc. It's awesome how profoundly STUPID (there, I said it) 99% of the people in the media are
 
^focusing on his grieving family is also egregious, unethical, and just low brow.. do we really need headlines like this? What value does this kind of "free press" give to the populace?

Thanks NYT.. profound journalism here. The wife of a dead husband is grieving?! Who woulda thought!
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Doc Holliday said:
And you don't know if your assertion is even true at this point. This is why investigations take time. The NTSB's job is not to provide a bunch of internet forums rapid responses, but rather sift and drill down looking for causal factors of the accident.

Your entertainment is not the concern of the NTSB. :rolleyes:
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The NTSB has neither time travelers nor telepaths on their payroll, hence they cannot say what was going through the pilot's mind seconds before the crash. That right there is the salient information. Moreover, from what I've heard about NTSB investigations (some of which occurred right here on POA) I'd say they couldn't find their fiddly bits in their pants.
 
steingar said:
The NTSB has neither time travelers nor telepaths on their payroll, hence they cannot say what was going through the pilot's mind seconds before the crash. That right there is the salient information. Moreover, from what I've heard about NTSB investigations (some of which occurred right here on POA) I'd say they couldn't find their fiddly bits in their pants.
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What's with the bitterness?
 
SToL said:
As for this accident, again, the VFR only certificate means squat. He was flying VFR. I believe the *only* reason he went IIMC is because he had so much speed, he had no options. At this point, either intentionally or through poor prior pilot technique, he went IIMC, apparently lost control, and the rest is sad history.
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For most people the news about the VFR only cert does mean something. Per your own words above, it means the pilot was either busting the regs, or using 'poor technique' (stumbling into IMC). It also implies that he probably didn't have much experience in actual IMC, since IFR flying wasn't required by his job (for the past 10 years).

C.
 
Not a helicopter pilot but I agree with most of what this guy says.

 
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