Hawktawk wrote:Pretty fascinating stuff there RD. Thanks for chasing it down! Honestly Id have thought helicopters were "statistically" safer than cars so that is surprising, although as has been pointed out the Professionally operated craft are far safer. That's my thing about charters. They are a for profit business trying to keep costs low. their pilots and Mechanics aren't 5the best trained or highest paid.
No problem, I thought it interesting, too. My point was that we really can't make a fair determination as to how safe helicopters are relative to other mode of transportation. The stats didn't include military aircraft, and the military has been flying them longer and I would guess that they put more hours in them than any other sector of society, yet we don't hear about very many of their choppers going down even though they're flying the same machines made by the same companies. Do they have better pilots? Are their safety procedures better?
Hawktawk wrote:I would guess fixed wing aircraft are much safer. I always hear airlines are the safest way to travel but of course there's everything in the spectrum from homebuilt planes to the 737 Max.......As I say, it may be statistically the safest way to travel but I'm certain it's the least safe way to crash. I've survived a head on collision with a 110 MPH closing speed, also was run over by my own boat in 1991 and I'm still here. If I was on kobe's helicopter of one of those Max 8s not so much...
I try not to get hung up on safety when the odds get out to the 1 in 10,000 range. I figure that if my number comes up, it comes up. There were 80,000 Americans killed by the flu last winter yet we're shocked when 15-20 people per year get killed in helicopter crashes. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be taking reasonable precautions, like getting your flu shot, washing your hands frequently, not flying in choppers when it's foggy, and not going out on the golf course during a thunderstorm and holding your 3-iron over your head. But I'm not going to quit enjoying my life due to a preoccupation with possible fatal activities. One of the biggest thrills of my life has been white water rafting, and if I thought about it in terms of my odds of dying from it, I would have never come close to the river.
Hawktawk wrote:Sounds pretty clear the feds think the pilot climbed suddenly to possible avoid terrain, took a u turn and suddenly dove downwards over 1000 feet in 15 seconds before impacting a ridge 20-30' from clearing it. The man got confused with up and down. The aircraft was not equipped with a black box. Even more important it did not have ground avoidance radar. In 2006 a directive was issued to equip all air taxis with it at a cost of 25-50k per plane but the politicians and lobbyist killed it.
Sounds pretty cheap now.
I wouldn't say that it's
"pretty clear" as their is an ear witness that reported that the helicopter didn't sound right and they can't rule out some sort of mechanical failure, but I agree with you that pilot error seems to be the most likely cause. And I, too, heard about the NTSB's vigorous and repeated objections to the FAA's failure to incorporate certain safety features in their regs for helicopters. Add that to the blood they already have on their hands over their role in the 737 MAX debacle.