I may have cued the wrong video from the guy. In the one I thought I cued, besides the fog and track, the author mentions speaking to a helicopter pilot who told him the incident pilot may have been looking down and to his right to program some panel near his right thigh. Thus triggering spatial disorientation, in a situation where, AIUI, plenty of unpracticed, yet nominally qualified, instrument pilots have trouble when they inadvertently enter IFR.
I agree that it shouldn’t be a problem for a trained pilot to inadvertently enter IFR. Throw task saturation, the fact they were likely running late (judging by the 10-15 minutes burning circles near the Burbank control area), and that he might have picked up some vertigo if he was expecting to fiddle with the right thigh panel, and have a horizon still when he lifted his head: I can see a screwup like this happening.
I mentioned awhile ago in the thread, the variety of instrumentation likely available to the pilot, like synthetic vision or whatever Garmin or Collins was calling it when they introduced blended terrain maps to artificial horizons. Look at that. And if the brown is above the blue, stop doing that.
Wow, ignorance fought. The one and only time I’ve ridden in a helicopter (police Jet Ranger on a fun flight), I sat in the front right seat, and the pilot sat in the left.
I was told of the dire consequences if I touched anything,. It worked. I was so overwhelmed by the view and the speed, I forgot that the microphone switch for the intercom was on the floor. Hell of a view.
I kind of like this theory. Explains a lot. None of the various other explanations adequately explain to me why there would have been was appear to be some pretty abrupt changes in speed and direction.
Apologies if I’ve missed it (quite likely), but I’m seeing references to heavy fog and crashing at 150mph - why didn’t the pilot slow down and then maintain a hover while trying to reorientate themselves/gain visibility? Obviously this isn’t an option in a fixed wing aircraft, but if I were a helicopter pilot, that’s what I’d be aiming for. Or is it because getting to that stage is difficult in a helicopter when you’re already disorientated in zero visibility?
A commercial helicopter pilot’s input would be helpful. It’s probably a different thought process. Personally, I love flying with an Ipad backing up the plane’s navigation system. It’s like having a navigator sitting next to you.
not a commercial pilot but flew Huey’s in the Army for five years and instrument rated. To hover one needs to have a visual reference to know if you are holding stable. In clouds with no reference you’d be drifting and not know it.
You were flying a 1000+ hp turbine helicopter. I’d say that was in the same league if not quite as fast as the one in question.
On a clear day in a slower fixed wing plane I’m still flying off instruments even if I’m wandering around sightseeing. If I make a turn I look at the artificial horizon out of habit. It’s the fastest reacting gauge and gives the most feedback to control input.
most of our flying was VFR, but yes I looked at the artificial horizon frequently. I assume their helicopter had out of ground effect hovering capabilities at the time. I was taught that in those situations you switch to an IFR flight plan. I’ve not followed the situation closely but going up is usually better then going down. My assumption is the pilot got disoriented and things cascaded from there.
The pilot went against his training and became spatially disoriented in thick clouds, a condition that can happen to pilots in low visibility, when they cannot tell up from down or discern which way an aircraft is banking, board members said.
Here, “can happen” is misleading: if a pilot loses outside visual reference and doesn’t promptly refer to appropriate aircraft instruments, he will lose spatial orientation - proper flight control is unlikely to last even a minute. A pilot of Zobayan’s experience certainly knew this, so the best guess is that he thought he could quickly climb above the clouds - a deadly and inexcusable error.
A puzzle is why the pilot, having decided to fly in cloud, didn’t switch to aircraft instrument reference before doing so. This would have been quite illegal and run the (slight) risk of colliding with authorized IFR traffic - but both are true of what he did. The point is that this would have been an easy way to avoid the considerable risk of what actually happened (crash due to spatial disorientation).
He probably thought the cloud layer was thin and he’d climb above it in seconds. When that didn’t happen, there was no way to recover.
Enough time has passed since his death that I think we can be honest about Kobe. I believe he raped that woman in Colorado. I think his selfish style of basketball was bad for the game. His final game was a complete joke. It was lets just pass to Kobe and let him shoot.
Im a lifelong Lakers fan. It pissed my dad off to no end.