A wag I read elsewhere commented, “Kobe was always known for forcing one up, when he should’ve passed instead…”
I have no idea whether the pilot felt pressure from his VIP client or not. I have suspicions, from my prior experience dealing with high net worth individuals like Kobe Bryant (though I never met him), but I have no proof. My point is, neither could the NTSB, from the evidence available. Specifically, no Cockpit Voice Recorder. And if you can’t prove your definitive statements in an official hearing, you shouldn’t be making them.
EDIT: And I realize I’m getting angry at another section of the hearing I didn’t quote in my post. The NTSB representative’s statement is likely absolutely true. There is no evidence the pilot was pressured.
I think you’re absolutely right on that kind of results-driven thinking killing pilots, Johnny. I did have a question for you, now that I think of it. In an airplane, AFAIK, a pilot can trim the aircraft for a smooth climb along a given heading, and be reasonably confident (if they know exactly where they are and where they’re pointed) that they won’t run into terrain in the next ten minutes or so. Long enough to rise out of that low stratus layer anyway.
Is the same true for helicopter flight? Or is it a constant series of corrections to keep it in controlled flight?
The difference is that airplanes are (generally speaking) positively stable. That is, if they are disrupted, the tend to return to a stable state. Helicopters are inherently instable, and require constant, minute, inputs to maintain level flight. I do not hold an IFR rating, and the helicopters I flew are VFR-only. ISTR that IFR-capable helicopters must have an autopilot. (A Robinson might be equipped for IFR training, but is not certified for flight in IMC.) I don’t know if that is true as, as I said, I don’t have the ratings.
Even in airplanes that are supposedly IFR capable, under Part 135 charter regs they can’t be used in actual IFR operations unless they are on a specific FAA-approved IFR maintenance program.
When I was flying medium twins in the Grand Canyon air tour biz, the airplane had a full set of IFR equipment, and I had all the ratings. But we could not legally fly in the clouds since the airplane was not being maintained to full IFR standards.
Why not so maintained? Because that cost money, and was not strictly necessary to the operation of an air tour business in a part of the country with normally excellent weather. So management skimped on that with the FAA’s blessing.
Would we have survived an encounter with clouds? Hard to say; the instruments performed plenty well enough in VMC, but if the pitot heat was inop we would never have known until the airspeed indicator quit in the damp cold clouds. Not a good day when that happens.
A non-instrument pilot attempting to fly a helo up through an overcast is insanely poor judgement.
IMO this accident totally ended with the pilot and totally started with management.
The NTSB should demand a complete audit of that company and everyone who’s worked for them in the last 10 years to establish whether management is incompetent at hiring, at managing, or is colluding to pilot push while carefully avoiding any written record.
Talking to people who don’t work there anymore and can’t be retaliated against is an excellent way to learn the truth. Not from just one person who may be disgruntled; but if a pattern emerges, act on it.
Thought the pilot actually had an IFR certificate for the type, even if the operation itself, and that specific aircraft, were not certified for IFR operations? Moreover, I had thought the helicopter—much like your example of the twin in the Grand Canyon—had sufficient instrumentation to navigate and maintain control in IMC, though the instruments very likely were not up to date on being certified for such?
Very bad call by the pilot. Obviously. Getting behind schedule, waiting for the airport (Burbank? Van Nuys?) to grant them a SVFR clearance to transit their airspace, likely didn’t help with the pilot’s likely perceived time constraints.
The basic installed flight and navigation equipment for helicopter IFR operations is listed under 14 CFR Part 29, § 29.1303, with amendments and additions in Appendix B of 14 CFR Parts 27 and 29 under which they are certified. The list includes:
Clock
Airspeed indicator
Sensitive altimeter (A “sensitive” altimeter relates to the instrument’s displayed change in altitude over its range. For “Copter” Category (CAT) II operations, the scale must be in 20-foot intervals.) adjustable for barometric pressure.
Magnetic direction indicator
Free-air temperature indicator
Rate-of-climb (vertical speed) indicator
Magnetic gyroscopic direction indicator
Stand-by bank and pitch (attitude) indicator
Non-tumbling gyroscopic bank and pitch (attitude) indicator
Speed warning device (if required by 14 CFR Part 29)Miscellaneous Requirements
Thunderstorm lights (transport category helicopters)Stabilization and Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS)Helicopter manufacturers normally use a combination of a stabilization and/or AFCS in order to meet the IFR stability requirements of 14 CFR Parts 27 and 29. These systems include:
Aerodynamic surfaces, which impart some stability or control capability that generally is not found in the basic VFR configuration.
Trim systems provide a cyclic centering effect. These systems typically involve a magnetic brake/spring device and may be controlled by a four-way switch on the cyclic. This system requires “hands on” flying of the helicopter.
Stability Augmentation Systems (SAS) provide short-term rate damping control inputs to increase helicopter stability. Like trim systems, SAS requires “hands-on” flying.
Attitude Retention Systems (ATT) return the helicopter to a selected attitude after a disturbance. Changes in attitude can be accomplished usually through a four- way “beep” switch or by actuating a “force trim”switch on the cyclic, which sets the desired attitude manually. Attitude retention may be a SAS function or may be the basic “hands off” autopilot function.
Autopilot Systems (APs) provide for “hands off” flight along specified lateral and vertical paths. The functional modes may include heading, altitude, vertical speed, navigation tracking, and approach. APs typically have a control panel for mode selection and indication of mode status. APs may or may not be installed with an associated FD. APs typically control the helicopter about the roll and pitch axes (cyclic control) but may also include yaw axis (pedal control) and collective control servos.
Flight Directors (FDs) provide visual guidance to the pilot to fly selected lateral and vertical modes of operation. The visual guidance is typically provided by a “single cue,” commonly known as a “vee bar,” which provides the indicated attitude to fly and is superimposed on the attitude indicator. Other FDs may use a “two cue” presentation known as a “cross pointer system.” These two presentations only provide attitude information. A third system, known as a “three cue” system, provides information to position the collective as well as attitude (roll and pitch) cues. The collective control cue system identifies and cues the pilot what collective control inputs to use when path errors are produced or when airspeed errors exceed preset values. The three-cue system pitch command provides the required cues to control airspeed when flying an approach with vertical guidance at speeds slower than the best- rate-of-climb (BROC) speed. The pilot manipulates the helicopter’s controls to satisfy these commands, yielding the desired flightpath or may couple the autopilot to the FD to fly along the desired flightpath. Typically, FD mode control and indication are shared with the autopilot. Pilots must be aware of the mode of operation of the augmentation systems and the control logic and functions in use. For example, on an instrument landing system (ILS) approach and using the three-cue mode (lateral, vertical, and collective cues), the FD collective cue responds to glideslope deviation, while the horizontal bar cue of the “cross pointer” responds to airspeed deviations. However, the same system when operated in the two-cue mode on an ILS, the FD horizontal bar cue responds to glideslope deviations. The need to be aware of the FD mode of operation is particularly significant when operating using two pilots.
You’re over thinking this. it’s a helicopter. At any point in the flight he could have arrested forward movement and stabilized it to provide time to work out plan-B. Call the center and climb out of the soup.
It’s easy to become visually disoriented but a helicopter has the advantage of hovering.
It does, but that can also lead to pressing on even more than you otherwise would because, as you say, you can just stop and put it down somewhere. Next thing you know, you’ve lost the necessary visual references to fly at all, hovering or not. Fundamentally it doesn’t really matter what the ability of the pilot/machine combo is, if the pilot is unable to make a correct “no go” decision prior to reaching the limit of that ability.
Apologies if this has already been posted, but the following video is of a student and instructor in a glider going into IMC inadvertently. The student is in the front with the louder, more prominent voice in the audio, and the instructor is in the back seat, slightly quieter and muffled.
I’ve linked to a point in the video not long before things go wrong but it is well worth watching right from the start.
A few points.
The student has some experience flying powered aircraft, hence at some points in the video he takes control when he has a better understanding of the situation.
They were flying in lift on the windward side of a ridge line. There was relatively clear air on that side, and cloud on the lee side. At some point the student allows the glider to cross the ridge line into some pretty heavy sink without the instructor realising. They talk about not crossing the ridge, when it was clear from the variometer that they had already crossed it.
Remarkably, they recovered the situation and landed in a paddock (not shown in the video).
There is quite a good discussion of the event by a gliding instructor in the following video:
IANA helo pilot, but from my reading I understand that hovering in IMC is impossible, at least with traditional instruments.
If you and the machine are instrument capable then yes, you can keep it right side up by attention to the artificial horizon. And yes, you can slow your forward speed to near whatever is the slowest speed your airspeed indicator can reliably display. Which affords some ability to pick your way forward or towards a acceptable landing spot in very low vis.
But once you get below that speed where the IAS is useless and you’re still IMC then you could be translating in almost any direction inadvertently. As well as drifting with whatever wind there is.
Further the inherent stability of a helo, such as it is, is greater at cruise speed than a near-hover. So however hard it is to keep right side up and on heading or course by reference to instruments at cruise or approach speeds, it’s that much more difficult at crawling speeds. The effects of any wind also increase the slower you go. Helos can correct for crosswind by translating or by crabbing. Just as in a fixed-wing, the required crab angle gets larger as the airspeed gets smaller.
Some modern helo nav systems include IMC hover as a feature. Using IRS/GPS-derived velocity vectors the autopilot can zero out motion in all 3 axes. Much like a quad-copter drone toy does it. I suppose with proper guidance cues a flight-director like feature could be supplied so the pilot could manually chase the needles to hold the helo stationary in zero vis. I don’t know whether that’s actually practical from a pilot skill/workload perspective.
I was thinking in terms of climbing up to avoid terrain and flying IFR as needed to a safe place to set down.
OK, we need some clarification from a helo driver. Is there an issue with the artificial horizon in hover mode? I would expect 3 axis display as in any other aircraft. It’s a gyro so it shouldn’t matter if there is motion involved.
If it were me and I got into a situation that created disorientation I’d stop forward motion and pull up as a last resort figuring any fixed wing flying in IFR would be in contact with a center and directed away from me.
Unfortunately, I’m not IFR rated. I used the actual horizon.
That said, hovering is the hardest thing to learn in a helicopter. It’s also the first thing you have to learn because you can’t do anything until you can hover. With zero hours in rotary-winged aircraft, I went up for a half-hour introductory lesson. I was given the controls in level flight, and I flew straight-and-level as well as I could in a fixed-wing aircraft. (I messed up turns, because helicopters fly differently from airplanes – which it would take me a while to remember farther on in training. On the drive home, I realised it was like a video game; just point where you want to go.) Hovering, however… Imagine you’re standing on a bowling ball, balancing a tray of drinks in each hand. Now you need to walk on the bowling ball to move it across the floor.
Hover training: We flew from Van Nuys to the practice area by the dam in El Monte. As I said, en route was easy. At the practice area, my instructor (Jack) gave me one task: Use the pedals to keep the nose pointed at a target. He’d control everything else. It took several tries before I could keep the nose pointed in the right direction. Immediately I got that down, he gave me the cyclic and the pedals. I had to keep the nose pointed with the pedals, and maintain our position over the ground with the cyclic. It must have looked like a drunken man was at the controls. Finally I was able to hold our position and direction. Again, before I could think ‘Hey, I’ve got this!’ I was given the collective and the throttle. I was to hold the nose on target, maintain a position over the ground, and now maintain a constant height. The whole process took about an hour and a half, and I was just able to hold a (semi-) stable hover. Subsequent lessons started with hover practice, and then maneuvering in hover, and then picking 'er up and setting 'er down, and so on.
The point is, with zero hours in a helicopter I could fly without crashing. Hovering was much harder. (Of course once you get it, your body makes the control inputs automatically.)
OK, we’ve established it’s difficult to hover for a beginner. Once that skill has been obtained is there a reason it can’t be done using the artificial horizon? Honestly, from a fixed wing perspective I find the A/H more useful when making turns then looking out the window. I can keep the nose locked on the horizon to maintain altitude and the wings locked on the bank angle.
Helicopters are inherently unstable, and things can go bad very quickly. I would not want to try to hover in IMC in a Robinson or a Schweizer. I think I’d be OK in the same type of aircraft as the accident helicopter, if it’s properly instrumented and with an augmented stability system. But in reality I think hovering in IMC would make the pilot very prone to spatial disorientation, and even the slightest mistake could be deadly.
knowing that I would stick to my original plan and just pull as straight up as I could to avoid terrain and take my chances.
I had an A/H lock on me on a steep turn once at night and it was the old style without the blue/brown coloring. Even with solid VFR ground reference It gave me a second of WTF. It’s amazing how fast your adrenaline drives disorientation. If you don’t see what you expect to see your brain immediately panics.
I didn’t realise the Lear 23 was grounded in 2015. I’d assumed that they’d cycled out or became too expensive to operate with those old turbojet engines.
I cannot provide personal experience as my helo time is limited to basically an intro flight, tootling around the area learning the controls and culminating in a comedy show of hovering practice using the method Johnny LA described. But from talking to real pilots shortly after Kobe’s crash, I gathered that hovering in IMC is impossible and the AH can’t help like you are supposing because of the extra degrees of freedom the helicopter has. Imagine the AH shows you pitched up are you pitched up flying forward or backwards? Can’t tell from the AH. Are you translating sideways? You could be rapidly building speed to the left relative to a hover without showing much bank angle at all. Given the teeny, extremely quick movements you need to make to stably hover, you’ll end up desperately out of shape, quickly, trying to chase the gauges.
