Uh-huh. 
The Marines were flying a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter–which is the largest helicopter in the western world and has a maximum gross weight of 73,500 pounds.
Heavy thunderstorms.
They found the helicopter, but not the crew–which seems odd:
Someone on Reddit is saying:
proofreadre
3 hours ago
5 confirmed fatalities on CalFire comms. RIP.
…
proofreadre
2 hours ago
CalFire radio traffic from the scene via PulsePoint. Border Patrol Bortac helicopter located the crash site and fire confirmed 5 x 1144.Terrible news.
https://www.reddit.com/r/USMC/comments/1al51hw/military_helicopter_with_5_marines_on_board_goes/
So this might just be a Reddit rumor or they might be notifying next of kin and won’t announce until they finish doing that.
Why did they have to search for them? Don’t they carry ELT’s on them while on a non-combat flight?
At least when I was in USAF there were no provisions to have ELTs on any of the aircraft.
Individual crewmembers carried personal walkie-talkie-like radios tuned to both 121.5 & 243.0 MHz that included an ELT-like tone broadcast. But you had to be alive to flip the switch. My understanding is those radios have long since been upgraded to EPIRB standards. But again you need to be alive to turn them on.
Dave Barry identified the problem with the Osprey in one of his columns decades ago, and here’s the problem: the thing can’t fly! At least, not very well. Dave envisioned a future in which Ospreys were sent on missions suspended by cables from aircraft that could actually fly.
yes but that was because they were treating it like a plane and not a helicopter. Different flight rules entirely.
Just need to be aware there’s an emergency in progress. Unless the helicopter explodes in mid air without warning it would be easy enough to activate it. No harm no foul if everything turns out OK.
When I go flying I go over emergency procedures for an engine failure. Things like how to quickly remove seat belt. Opening the door so it doesn’t jam on impact. Locate the fire extinguisher. Locate the fuel selector so it can be turned off.
RIP.
Boeing can’t catch a break. CNN discovers a serious flaw in the 777:
The tanks are never empty. Sometimes they have way too much air in them, but they’re never empty.
Not sure if this has been discussed before, because this 5.5k topic is not one I follow, so apologies if it is FAQ.
There is lots of public information involved in flying, which allows tracking the movement of particular aircraft. The website Ground Control has things like Elon Jet and Taylor Swift’s Jets which posts to various social media information about the planes’ movements.
I occasionally see the planes make very short hops. Here are some examples
- 28 mile (24 NM) flight from CPS to SUS, 1/30 (Swift)
- 28 mile (24 NM) flight from SUS to CPS, 1/30 (Swift)
- 17 mile (15 NM) flight from LGB to LAX, 2/4 (Musk)
- 13 mile (11 NM) flight from HHR to LGB, 2/3 (Musk)
Why?
The obvious answer is because the owner wanted the plane at a different airport, but that is really just a useless non-answer. Is there any good aviation reason Swift would want to fly back and forth between a couple of small airports in St. Louis? Seems like in most cases driving would be easier. Seems to me it would be much easier to go through boarding at Long Beach or Hawthorne than LAX, though I’ve never been to the private lounge at LAX.
Have you ever driven through L.A. traffic? Even splitting lanes on a motorcycle takes a while to get anywhere. If you care more about time than the expense, you can just get on your private jet and get to your destination sooner.
Or maybe she was at several events in the region: she flew into the airport closest to the first event, drove to the others, and flew out from the airport closest to the last. In the meantime, the pilot flew the plane between them.
It’s possible those were empty flights (meaning no passengers) to re-position the airplane.
While I assume those are privately owned airplanes, this is common practice in the charter world. More often than not, when I drop passengers off I then have to fly somewhere else to pick up my next trip. This frequently involves a flight from say, Teterboro to White Plains, or O’Hare to Midway. Very short hops, which are actually quite challenging from the pilot POV because everything is compressed. The shortest flight I’ve ever done in a jet was Thermal, CA to Bermuda Dunes, at around 6 minutes.
Even assuming Musk and Swift aren’t chartering out their planes when they’re not using them (though they perhaps could) I would bet they were being moved for whatever the next mission might be.
I doubt Musk charters his plane, but he does use it to ferry SpaceX employees between LA and Texas, and I doubt he’s always onboard. I don’t know if any of the trips are explained by that.
The optimistic pilot says the fuel tanks are half full. The pessimistic pilot says the fuel tanks are half empty. @LSLGuy says the fuel tanks are completely full, which prompts the optimist and the pessimist to resolve their differences and make @LSLGuy get out and walk.
Yes, that was one of the possibilities I thought of. If money has no meaning to you, a 25 minute flight to save an hour in traffic might be worthwhile. Though Google currently thinks it’s only a 25 minute drive between LGB and LAX, with traffic.
This one is weird, and it probably isn’t clear from my list. The plane was at SUS, flew to CPS, and an hour later flew back to SUS. Clearly seems like picking someone up, or something, but right now Google says that is only a 40 minute drive. Seems easier to have the Uber Black drive someone the whole way.
It makes sense: the client says fly to HHR, so you go to HHR. The client says pick up at LAX, so you go to LAX. In between, might you go to LGB because that’s where the Gulfstream service center is, so you can get the washer fluid topped up?
I suppose in the charter and private jet world, there is no pushback like, “can’t you just have your car drop you at LGB? (It would save you $3000).”
Would it happen that you go to SUS, but they’re out of gas, so you go to CPS to fuel up, then fly back to SUS to be ready for client? Those are the kinds of things I’m wondering about. Obviously unless someone here has inside knowledge, there really isn’t a way to know for sure. Mostly I’m interested if it really could be something as simple as, “everyone knows LAX has the cheapest gas, you can save thousands fueling there,” or some other aviation reason that might not be obvious to someone outside the field.
At one time, up until maybe 10ish years ago, there were scheduled passenger flights between SNA (Orange County) and LAX. I imagine there were enough relatively wealthy people Orange County who were willing to pay a little more to fly to LAX and connect and avoid having to drive there in LA traffic to make that flight profitable.
JetBlue offered flights form Long Beach to Burbank during that “Carmageddon” thing when one of the freeways was closed, albeit that was more of a publicity stunt.
Those kinds of decisions happen all the time in my world as a charter pilot. My office has certainly pitched clients on driving another 20 minutes to meet the plane somewhere rather than having us repo - it saves a takeoff / landing cycle and a couple of engine starts and that adds up. The clients don’t always go for it though. A few times I’ve seen it forced on clients - once because we couldn’t use the desired airport when it rained (wet runways change the takeoff / landing performance parameters), so the clients had to slog all the way to Westhampton, NY instead of taking off from Easthampton. Boo hoo.
As for getting maintenance and fuel, we try hard to plan ahead. It’s not usually fuel availability (though that does sometimes happen), it’s more about fuel price. We’ll make every effort to plan our fuel loads so we take more where it costs less and then tanker it elsewhere.