I learned something new. helicopters operate under different visual flight rules. So it wasn’t necessarily illegal until he got caught up in the clouds. I think it goes against common sense but I guess it’s based on the idea that helicopters can just set it down in an emergency versus what a fixed wing plane can do. So their minimum visual requirements are lower.
If “everybody knows” none of the local helicopter operators can fly IFR then that puts a lot of pressure on the pilot to avoid doing this. By flying up through the clouds their own aircraft transmits altitude information to radar operators. Busted.
IFR flights require a flight plan. So an unplanned transition of a VFR flight to IFR for emergency reasons would have administrative consequences even if the operator were certified for IFR ops.
In any event, being “busted” through transponder information is not really a consideration. You’d subsequently need to fly an instrument approach somewhere, and it’s not plausible that you’d try to sneak around in controlled airspace and hope nobody noticed. You’d certainly immediately contact a controller as soon as you went IFR. There would be a subsequent investigation into the circumstances, and there might be some consequences, depending how foolish your original plan was given the weather. But I don’t think you’d lose your license or anything - it would be a foolish precedent for the FAA to set to penalize someone too harshly for taking the safest course of action under difficult circumstances. Although I guess the operator could fire you, who knows.
If it happened repeatedly, of course that’s a different matter, and could have more serious consequences, probably as much for the operator as the pilot. So it’s probably true that to some extent the fact the operator is not certified for IFR ops might have weighed on the pilot’s decision making.
Are flight plans approved by the FAA or just filed with the FAA? If the former, doesn’t the FAA have access to the same met reports the pilot does?
Wouldn’t somebody say, “Uhhh…dude, about your VFR flight plan. Met says clouds down to 800 and less than 2 miles visibility. So, IFR or Uber, your call.”
while you can file a VFR flight plan you don’t have to. You would do that for flight following if you needed it. Normally you file from point A to point B. With modern GPS navigation the traditional routes along VOR beacons (Very High Frequency Omni-Directional Range) is pointless.
I’m trying to imagine someone filing a flight plan for route 5 to rt 101 and getting off at exit 47A.
I agree it would be foolish to penalize someone harshly for taking the safest course. it’s the the flight leading up to it that gets called into question.
I think most pilots have had weather bite them in the ass. It’s what you do when it happens that gets called into question.
It’s also because helicopters don’t have a minimum forward speed to keep flying. One reason for the visibility minimums is to give pilots time to react to obstacles in their path. If you’re flying along at 200 kph you have extremely little time to react to something coming into view in the fog. If you can move at 10 kph you have more time to see and react.
Then again, in this accident the helicopter was moving pretty fast, comparable to fixed-wing speeds. That didn’t help.
On top of which, there seems to be a great institutional resistance to declaring an emergency - which finding yourself IFR while flying VFR actually is - which would allow a pilot to do just that - fly up through clouds to clear air. Of course, there may be consequences to that, such as having to explain how you got into that situation in the first place, but that’s got to hurt less than slamming into a hillside.
This is a situation where doing the legal thing - flying SVFR - is the bad thing to do from the viewpoint of desirable outcomes and doing the illegal thing - busting up through the cloud cover, that is, temporary IFR conditions to get to actual VFR conditions - is actually the safer option. Which is not to say that’s completely safe, since after all the pilot wouldn’t be able to see what’s above him. But while there might be a passing airplane above him there is definitely ground under/near him.
Just filed. There’s no one looking over a pilot’s shoulder on those, it is the pilot’s responsibility to plan a safe flight. Sure, after an accident or incident the FAA or NTSB will look up the weather records.
No one is telling pilots “IFR or Uber”. Pilots fly aircraft, not ATC. ATC will tell you “VFR flight is not advised at this time” but that’s the extent of it.
One thing I just read was that Kobe Bryant won an Oscar. For a surprising category: Best Animated Short Film.
Anyway, the article said that Bryant was not only the first former professional athlete to win an Oscar but the first to ever be nominated. I find that surprising and a little hard to believe. Surely there must have been some other professional athlete who went on to a successful enough career in film to have been nominated?
I was thinking Burt Reynolds, who was nominated for Boogie nights. But thinking deeper about it he never made the pros in football, it was his character in the Longest Yard who had a short Pro career, getting me confused.
You don’t need a VFR flight plan for flight following, and as far as I know ATC doesn’t even see VFR flight plans. They’re very nearly useless. Their only purpose is that, if you open your flight plan and fail to close it within about an hour of your filed ETA, search and rescue will start looking for you along the route you filed.
It seems to me, this would be one clear case where flight assistance (or close to autonomous flying) could improve safety. From what I’ve read helicopters are simply difficult to fly, but radar detection could have shown him the mountain or guided him away from it. What is happening on this front?
Carl Weathers had a role in an Oscar-winning movie (Rocky) but he wasn’t nominated.
Fred Williamson was in MASH, which was nominated for Best Picture.
Jim Brown was in The Dirty Dozen alongside John Cassavetes, who was nominated in that movie.
Alex Karras was in Victor/Victoria, alongside Julie Andrews, Robert Preston, and Lesley Ann Warren who were nominated in that movie.
Chuck Connors, who played both professional baseball and professional basketball, was never nominated for an Oscar but he was nominated for an Emmy.
Terry Crews was never nominated for an Oscar but he was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble.
Tony Danza was never nominated for an Oscar but he was nominated for an Emmy and two Golden Globes and he won a People’s Choice Award.
Forest Whitaker won an Oscar. He played college football but didn’t play professionally.
Tommy Lee Jones won an Oscar. He played college football but didn’t play professionally.
Sean Connery won an Oscar. He was offered a position as a professional soccer player but he declined it.
John Goodman played college football but didn’t play professionally. He has won several Emmys and been in movies which won or were nominated for Best Picture Oscars.
Kurt Russell played professional baseball in the minor leagues. He’s been nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe but not an Oscar.
O.J. Simpson was in The Towering Inferno alongside Fred Astaire, who was nominated in that movie. The Towering Inferno was also nominated for Best Picture. (That’s right. The Towering Inferno got a nomination in the same year that Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Blazing Saddles, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, The Front Page, The Great Gatsby, Harry and Tonto, Lacombe, Lucien, Murder on the Orient Express, The Night Porter, The Parallax View, Swept Away, Thieves Like Us, The Three Musketeers, A Woman Under the Influence, and Young Frankenstein were all snubbed.)
There is terrain avoidance equipment, and it is an option for that particular model of helicopter, but such equipment is less often put into helicopters than airplanes.
You see, one of the thing helicopters are good at is staying in close proximity to the ground or an object without undue hazard. Now, imagine someone in a helicopter trying to do something, say, very carefully tying to rescue an injured hiker halfway down a cliff with the terrain avoidance radar thing saying “ALARM! ALARM! TOO CLOSE! PULL UP! TOO CLOSE! PULL UP!” and the pilot saying “Goddammit, I couldn’t do this job if I wasn’t this close!”
Aha! You say, what about charter commuter flights like this? Couldn’t you turn it on for that? Well, probably - if the equipment was there in the first place. Like optional anything, an aircraft owner is not likely to install it unless the owner really feels a need for it due to the expense of purchase, installation, recalculating the weight and balance of the machine, accepting the slightly reduce payload, then the ongoing expense to maintain and keep the equipment certified. While any one item might not be that bad compared to the overall cost of buying and maintaining the flying parts, it does all add up.