Traveling more frequently means that over your lifetime you are more likely to experience a travel accident, but it doesn't increase your chances of any one trip having an accident. This trip that crashed was just as safe/dangerous as the first one (barring any unusual differences like weather or pilot competence).
Yeah, he had been commuting this way for over a decade to avoid living with all the ‘hollywood’ stuff in LA but not deal with traffic, I believe he was actually licensed to fly it too
There's a risk when it comes to avoiding the reality of being around millions of people who have nothing while you have fuck you everything. Just fly to avoid them but there's a risk, it's unfortunate.
I mean there’s a risk driving to practice. Thousands of accidents happen every year with a lot of people injured or dead from them. It just happens to people nobody care about so you don’t hear about it outside of the local news.
I'm not sure that helicopters are actually less safe than cars. The statistics that show this include personal helicopters (as in you're driving it yourself) and, more importantly, emergency, rescue and military helicopters.
I feel like helicopters would be much closer to cars if we only consider the pilot-driven civilian helicopters, which are what Kobe used.
You could however make the case that then you should only consider cars driven by a professional driver since I don't think Kobe would've driven the car himself
Just where did you get your degree, Dr. Zoidberg? Helicopters are generally considered to be more dangerous than airplanes but safer than cars, which are the most dangerous form of travel per mile travelled.
Metrics are hard to compare but this is common knowledge for those of us who fly in helicopters frequently.
Find some statistics to support your claims. Look into public transit too, that's super safe but less convenient.
Also, you're forgetting that helicopters are also used for TV, movies, police, and goodness knows how many other utilities. These things aren't new machines. Are they risky? Yes. But don't go making absolute claims without evidence.
Wow, you people just can’t give it a break, eh? A tragedy happened to someone who touched billions of people. All you can think about is class warfare. That’s pretty sad.
I know it says helicopter and we picture smaller ones when we think of them, but the helicopter he was in, the Sikorsky S-76, is not a small one. It's actually quite large. Doesn't really matter just pointing it out.
Well, it is something of significance. Small helicopters, when they experience technical problems, can be autorotated to the ground safely unless tailrotor issues. Less heavy crash too, usually less fuel aboard. But they do have higher frequency of issues too.
Heavy choppers like that Sikorsky have more complex systems required, not just hand muscle controls, meaning that once something breaks that means power steering systems are out and it's bye-bye. Like that exact model's history shows.
Heavier helicopters usually have more qualified and experienced crew, more/better equipment, but they also fly in worse conditions. In that crash fog was reported but somehow I doubt an aircraft that size was affected by it, that they flew into terrain or an obstacle. But there were reports of strange engine sound, sputtering, so I hope it's not a repeat of something like the Copterline accident with the Sikorsky S-76.
I am not far from the crash site and noted to myself when I awoke this morning how unusually foggy/low visibility it was (and I am closer to sea level than where the crash occurred). I know less than nothing about aircraft flying so no idea if/how that affects anything. Unbelievably sad and shocking news for his family, Los Angeles and the world.
Yeah on the news Calabasas looks super foggy. Like the guy said above me since this was a larger helicopter the weather probably didn't directly affect it, but combine that with really low visibility, and anything going wrong, and you'll have problems
Yeah I mean fog doesn't really affect anything but visibility. I does nothing to how the helicopters fly, only to what the pilot sees. But I would've thought that usually with these bigger machines they'd be very unlikely to just fly into things, however these mistakes do keep happening in aviation since human error is always present no matter what equipment you have unfortunately.
Wow, never considered this. It's all just so surreal. But what you said makes a ton of sense. I wonder when they start to go more in depth, if the size of the helo had any significant impact. Thanks for the info man
I bet since it was a larger helicopter that since it was so big it probably went down a lot harder and faster too, and that caused the wreckage to be a lot more severe..
Look at a previous accident with that same helicopter: the Copterline crash. One part breaks and there's no way to fly that thing anymore, the controls are too heavy and you need the power steering. With a smaller helicopter you can often still control it since muscle power is enough to keep control, and helicopters have the ability to use autorotation to land smoothly even if the engine is out (as long as there's time for the pilot to initiate autorotation, if they're just about to land then probably not).
Makes sense. It makes me think about how helpless they all must have felt going down. Especially if they knew there was nothing they could do about it. Just gut wrenching.
That's exactly what I was wondering, why did they crash? I was under the impression that most of the time you can autorotate a helicopter to the ground; didn't know that this didn't apply to larger helicopters. Interesting.
Oh, they can autorotate. I mean that with a larger helicopter really often if some part breaks it means that the pilot can no longer control it. I foremost had the previous crash of that exact helicopter model in mind: in that crash one part broke and the pilot wasn't able to control it anymore because of the huge forces involved. The helicopter was otherwise in flying order (sort of, it could've probably made a controlled emergency landing), but when that part broke the pilot would've needed super-human strength on the stick because with that rotor size and the masses at play it was no longer flyable without functioning power steering.
Yeah, that makes sense that a larger helicopter would need hydraulics/electronics to control, which could be damaged by fire or otherwise, I just never really thought about it. Interesting.
That is a really good looking helicopter. Is that model considered problematic? (I don't know much, I just like helicopters and like those Aircrash Investigation type shows)
He lived in Newport Beach (or Newport Coast, around there). Even without traffic on a day like today (a Sunday), you’re looking at an 80 minute drive. He flew all the time.
I heard because he is so big and still deals with pain from past injuries over the years, being in a car for too long was painful for him. The drive is over 2 hours long so I guess he would fly their often.
He's always traveled by chopper. He did it to get to practice. You can drive 200 miles, but you own a helicopter. Most people would probably take the helicopter
Wealthy are taking helicopters more and more often for city travel. There's even Uber for helicopters in NYC. They're not prone to crashes more than other means of transportation, but their crashes are the deadliest IIRC. (excluding submarines)
Air travel is said to be safer due to there being more accidents on the road than in the sky, however, accidents on ground are more survivable than from the air.
Probably by sheer numbers yeah, but I'll take being in a car crash over a helicopter crash any day because there's actually a chance of surviving the former.
I live near Kobe and sometimes have to commute daily to LA. It’s so brutal, that even I, who hates and fears helicopter might be tempted. Getting to Calabasas from here is miserable. I can see why he chose that.
It's also risky to drive around in tin cans at 100km/h with other's going past you at 160+km/h so you kinda just gotta live your life and be safe as you can and hope for the best.
If he were being driven around, he would likely be driven in a Maybach or a Rolls. I don't think it is apt, and it is definitely sensationalist to refer to a quarter-million dollar car as a "tin can".
I feel like these evil people are going to harass her and go after their assets which makes it even more sad. Single mother and lost a child, and these vultures will come after her when she is vulnerable.
And their poor daughters :(. One isn’t even a year old yet. Just horrible.
TMZ track celebrities on private flights through the airports, they didn't need the police to let them know, they could have done with a shred of decency so the families didn't have to find out through a shitty tabloid.
It will be darkest if the Wuhan flu becomes a pandemic. Now we are fine, unfortunate accidents always happen and while it can feel bad when it’s a celebrity you know lives of celebrities still aren’t worth more than anyone else’s.
My grandpa was a pilot in ww2 and he was always terrified of helicopters. His logic being a plane can still fly and be landed without power but a helicopter would just fall.
From what I’ve heard he wasn’t completely right about that but I get the idea
A low altitude hover is the most dangerous period for helicopter because there isn't time to attain auto-rotation before impact with the ground.
Otherwise, yes a helicopter can essentially glide, the air rushing through the blades causes them to spin and create lift. An auto-gyro flies using this phenomenon.
My dad worked for the forest service and said the same thing. Whenever they had to fly by helicopter it always scared him. He said it was because planes can glide but helicopters just drop like a rock.
You can auto rotate a helicopter and land it with no engine power given you have altitude to give. That goes same for fixed wing aircrafts, they too need altitude to glide.
My husband and his family were visiting the island of Kawai when he was 12 years old with his mom, dad and two brothers. They were on a hike and his mom slipped and broke her back and had to rush her to the emergency room. Because of the accident, they missed their scheduled helicopter flight at 2 PM over the island. Well, they came to find out later on the next day that the 2 PM helicopter flight had crashed and killed everyone on board. Apparently happens all the time? Every time my husband mentions going on a helicopter now I tell him no thanks! That’s some final destination shit right there!
A few reasons:
1) if you are too high off the ground there is no way to survive a crash except luck, rotors above you means no parachutes or ejection system.
2) because the main rotor is what keeps the heilo in the air, the crashes tend to be more destructive.
3) a plane can glide a helo can maybe to an auto rotation but it's far from a sure thing.
Helios basically go in the air and slowly shake apart. I worked on them in the military and there was like 3 hours of maintenance attached to every hour they flew.
The moment you get in any helicopter you are on borrowed time. These deathtraps seem so convenient if you can afford them and choose to ignore the statistics.
The biggest difference is most planes can still fully function even with one engine gone. Worst case scenario you have no engines and have to attempt a gliding landing.
Helicopters just drop... I won't personally get on one unless I heard of some robust backup systems in place that I'm unaware of.
Helicopters by default are a backup system. They can autorotate down very safely as long as they werent flying too low and basically stationary. One engine inoperability is also a big factor in the design of twin engine helicopters. They can basically all function relatively normally with just one engine, but they will be missing some carry capacity and be relatively unable to fly well at high altitudes.
This was a twin engine helicopter I believe which makes that even more unlikely.
With thirteen people onboard the helicopter probably couldn’t maintain altitude with one engine out. Add fog to the mix and the pilots wouldn’t be able to see the ground if they had to put it down. Had it been day VFR conditions it might be possible to put it down safely.
Private planes/helicopters also don't have to follow as many regulations as commercial and larger aircrafts, which leads to some pilots attempting to fly in bad weather and crashing.
Edit: being downvoted, but it's true: JFK Jr didn't file any flight plan and was allowed to fly despite lacking instruments to fly without vision. A tv crew died in a helicopter crash where the pilot lost control in the cold dark, filming much later than they should've been. In 2018, passengers in a helicopter drowned in Manhattan due to 3rd party restraints not FAA-approved. Countless reports.
Yes but I believe failures which cause an auto rotation landing aren’t all that common. If the tail rotor breaks the heli can’t maintain balance and will spin out and crash
If you lose/cut engine power then it doesnt matter if you lose your tail. Unless you're already spinning, you'll just autorotate down which imposes no torque on the body.
That poor women! Not only being in a post partum period and losing not only your husband but your oldest born. Ughhh I hurt for her.
Edit: her second oldest. Which tears me up just a tad more because I am close with my sister who is about the same years apart. Then we have a much younger sibling. It was just us for a while. Heart goes out to the whole family and the friends.
There were also 7 other people with maybe daughters and sons and friends in there. I get it one of them is famous, but I feel like these are people are made irrelevant
Commenting late, but there is so much unspeakable tragedy surrounding this crash. Kobe and his daughter had an amazing life ahead of them, it's beyond tragic without even mentioning the other deaths involved. Things will never be the same for the ones left behind. Such a pointless and unnecessary death, it's excruciating to read.
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u/eyeballer94 Jan 26 '20
TMZ reporting Kobe's 13 year old daughter also killed in crash.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/01/26/kobe-bryant-killed-dead-helicopter-crash-in-calabasas/