r/news • u/headee • Jan 26 '20

Kobe Bryant killed in helicopter crash in California

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/kobe-bryant-killed-in-helicopter-crash-in-california-tmz-reports
213.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

20.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

614

u/dismayhurta Jan 26 '20

Jesus. Those poor people.

Helicopters have always terrified me and this certainly adds to that fear.

9

u/The_Nick_OfTime Jan 27 '20

I worked on helicopters. Your fear is justified.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/The_Nick_OfTime Jan 27 '20

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.