Fixtur
Dunning-Kruger Expert
i grew up just north of you.
Kobe Crash
- Thread starter mshunter
- Start date
i grew up just north of you.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
Looks like great "IFR" to me. He was on the correct side of the road, wasn't he?
Technically, that looks like LIFR to me.
It's not the place it used to be. Still not a bad place to live, but the juice ain't worth the squeeze anymore. I'd be outta here if I could take my kids with me.
Boris Badenov
This is no laughing matter.
Easy drive to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Are you a communist?
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Other point often missed by people flying heavier well-equipped aircraft, a whole lot of helicopters including ones you would expect to be otherwise have absolutely no anti-ice capability greater than what you would find on a 172. And being the “wing in constant rotation” is going roughly 400 knots, low temps and water form ice very quickly, and also shed asymmetrically so it’s very dangerous to take a helicopter into icing.
Being stationed in the Pacific North west, the limiting factor for the CAB out there wasn’t certification or crew experience, it was inability to climb up into the weather without hitting a freezing level. Effectively you were doing the same bad idea “just get lower/slower” a non instrument helicopter would do, but for different reasons.
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Fixtur
Dunning-Kruger Expert
Worth visiting, for sure, and this is coming from me.
I didn’t trust the blade deice on the Pave Hawk further than I could throw it.
Our agency Blackhawk was doing an XC a couple years back. Crew was talking about being in IMC and the cruising while the blade deice did its thing for nearly 45 mins of icing going on. I’m hearing this and am like “you dimwits realize that this stuff is for helping you exit icing, not to help you stay in icing, right?”
USMCmech
Well-Known Member
Other than hot wing jets, any anti/de-ice system is only there to buy you time to get out of the ice.
I flew 208s for 4 years and never had a problem following that philosophy. Either, climb, descend or divert as soon as you start picking up ice.
CFI A&P
Exploring the world one toilet at a time.
Don’t forget that the helicopter is IFR capable, the pilot can be IFR capable, but the operator is a charter company with VFR only opspecs.
Get-there-itis squared or maybe cubed once the pressure of money is factored in.
Autothrust Blue
"Well, on the Brasilia..."
If for no other reason than to figure out what not to do.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Personal favorite...
60 main blade De-ice operable... Tail Rotor de-ice inop.
Aircraft not restricted.
Like you realize why this isn’t gonna work right guys?
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stroboli62
Well-Known Member
stroboli62
Well-Known Member
Been out of the wrenchbending biz of UH60 for a few years
BUT
Even us malcontent 67N and 15Ts holdin A&P certs...can ID that it's not "gonna" work
stellar logbook entry.....IF it is
BUT
Even us malcontent 67N and 15Ts holdin A&P certs...can ID that it's not "gonna" work
stellar logbook entry.....IF it is
Autothrust Blue
"Well, on the Brasilia..."
I mean, I still don't like to loiter in aforementioned airplanes either.
agreed on all. And even with those factors and operational restrictions, this should’ve been a fully recoverable “inconvenience” of going inadvertent IMC…….IF…….the pilot had maintained currency, comfort, and qualification in instrument flying, and most especially, being in the mindset on that flight that at any moment, inadverent or even intentional IMC, could occur, and to have been mentally and planning prepared for that contingency.
CFI A&P
Exploring the world one toilet at a time.
This is totally a Monday morning QB situation, but all it would've taken was to fess up, pop up, get an IFR clearance then file an ASAP/ ASRS form and be done with it. Then again, it adds up to a classic accident chain - questionable weather, very high profile passenger and the pressure to complete the trip that they've done before and human nature not to disappoint customers.
Agreed, though I wonder how far behind the aircraft and totally out of his element of any comfort/currency/experience he instantly got at the specific moment he went IMC, to where he was fighting to control the helo against his own over-controlling flight control inputs…..far and away from being able to have/gain the SA to even begin to execute the proper inadvertent IMC procedures at all. The evidence seems to point to their fate being sealed the instant they went IMC, yet it didn’t at all need to be. Which is the sad/tragic part.
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
It’s very similar to Alaska CFIT accidents. The hard answer is that you have an entire culture to change and in spite of what managers with their buzzwords will tell you changing a culture is not easy. The problem is that too easily a focus on safety turns into inadvertent IMC being a taboo topic because a perception (true or not) that by going IMC you’re being unsafe and that might get you disciplined or fired. When in reality it’s better to keep that stuff out in the open and understand that it does happen. I understand that there are often differences from the fixed wing community in equipment and pilot instrument proficiency (although on the equipment front it seems like there is more of that stuff ending up in helos these days which is good) but in Alaska we’ve been losing aircraft with synthetic vision and moving maps, and fully IFR aircraft with IFR crews to CFIT and that’s frankly stupid.I’m glad you made this point, because it seems like at the end of the day the rotorcraft community has a cultural problem with instrument flying, and I’m curious if you’ve run into it as a fixed wing to rotor wing conversion?
Modern multi-turbine helicopters (including military) have an over abundance of the necessary bells and whistles for safe IFR flight including glass cockpit, FMS, SAS, helipilot, etc... and the lowest common denominator is the human in the seat, their lack of instrument currency and/or cultural reluctance to pick up a pop-up IFR clearance instead of taking the more familiar option of heading up a box canyon in degrading SVFR conditions.
View attachment 59063
Especially in Southern CA, where most of the time the “marine layer” advection fog is only 500-1000 ft thick, it’s a pretty trivial task to: pick up a pop-up clearance, climb through a very thin layer, cruise on top clear of all the scary terrain, shoot an approach through said thin layer again to an airport on the other side of the scary terrain, pop out below the layer and cancel and proceed VFR or SVFR to wherever you were originally going. Ok well trivial except you’re flying a dynamically unstable machine that’s constantly trying to kill you, but hopefully the SAS and the helipilot help a little bit with that part.
There are plenty of COPTER TACAN approaches around my parts too, so I know the military rotor wing community flies instruments somewhat regularly. Is it the civilian corporate/HEMS world that is hesitant? Or everybody since actual IMC time is just so rare? Do you have any thoughts on positive steps that could be taken to jog pilots to revert to IFR when the links in the chain are starting to align towards a CFIT accident?
This topic seems to have a lot in common with the Alaska fixed wing CFIT accident threads over the years, and I’m also curious if any lessons learned from that community might also be applicable here?
My unpopular take is that any 135 rotorcraft or fixed wing bigger than a super cub should have IFR instrumentation and minimum of a WAAS approach capable GPS receiver with moving map, and every pilot of same should get an IFR check ride per the usual rules for an IFR 135 operation.
A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
The Sheriffs and LAPD both grounded their choppers because of the poor/crappy and ever changing visibility that entire morning, long before his pilot decided it would be fine to fly through that muck.This crash and the death of all those souls should have never happened.
"The fog was severe enough Sunday morning that the Los Angeles Police Department’s Air Support Division grounded its helicopters and didn’t fly until later in the afternoon, department spokesman Josh Rubenstein said.
“The weather situation did not meet our minimum standards for flying,” Rubenstein said. The fog “was enough that we were not flying.” LAPD’s flight minimums are 2 miles of visibility and an 800-foot cloud ceiling, he said.
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department made a similar assessment about the fog and had no helicopters in the air Sunday morning “basically because of the weather,” Villanueva said."
Federal investigators look for answers in Kobe Bryant helicopter crash
Lakers legend Kobe Bryant died when the helicopter he was traveling in crashed into a hillside in Calabasas shortly before 10 a.m.
www.latimes.com
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