Kobe Bryant Crash-- Risk by the Numbers

airplanes don't crash because of what's not in here but because of what's not in here and occasionally what's not in here or in here but what is in here helps a lot with what's supposed to be in here and this is a good place or some numbers starting with this one that's your chance of dying in the crash of a scheduled passenger airliner in the US during the past 10 years well it's not really zero but it's functionally zero this is the real number it's one chance in about a hundred and eighty two million this is your chance of getting struck by lightning this is your chance of getting hit by a bus but being an aviation and all you know that not all airplane operations are created equal we got part 91 we got part 135 and we got part 121 this is your chance of dying in a part 91 flight over the last 10 years she doesn't look too damn good compared to flying on airliners because it's about well you do the math if airline crash is fitted into this coffee cup GE accidents would be a barrel and then some but come on one chance of dying for every 100,000 hours and is so bad and if it were we would all park our airplanes and that gets us to the Kobe Bryant fatal helicopter crash in California on January 26 that flight was flown under part 135 the commuter and air taxi regulation part 135 is somewhere between the wild west of part 91 and the button-down world of part 121 airline flying more on that in a minute and I gotta warn you here about the small numbers syndrome there are only about 10,000 helicopters in the US and for the past decade the ones used in commercial service have averaged five or six fatal crashes a year the 10-year fatal rate is 0.38 per hundred thousand hours of flight yeah that's way worse than the scheduled Airlines but it's less than half of the general aviation average one or two accidents can really swing the numbers to show you how futile it is to compare commercial helicopter accident rates with airline rates consider this if a fatal accident rate for the airlines was the same as it is for commercial helicopters there would be a fatal airline crash about every five days Amtrak and Greyhound couldn't begin to carry the people who wouldn't fly on airplanes and these things would make a comeback and airport terminals so here a big shout-out to the men and women who fly part 1:21 airliners this Bud's for you skipper okay fo in the US the scheduled passenger airlines went an entire decade without a fatal crash 90 million departures it's just a staggering level of safety and the reason for that is that when you get on a part 1:21 airliner you got a lot going for you two pilots and two engines at least always under IFR tks and is required that's traffic avoidance and terrain warning technology hard limits on weather standardized pilot training no single pilot operations a seniority system that retains experienced pilots structured schedules and better rest rules on the fly engine trend monitoring and by the way an army of professional dispatchers to help crews sort through weather scheduling and loading issues and that's not even everything now consider the middle of the spectrum the part 135 operation of the sort Kobe Bryant used for air taxi around Los Angeles in this case a single pilot operation VFR only IFR not even permitted no certified terrain equipment aboard and the pilot is largely on his own for weather decisions part 135 training standards vary widely but aren't nearly as stringent as part 121 and let's just look what a VFR helicopter carrying paying passengers is allowed to do under part 135 the pilot can fly as low as 300 feet over a congested area day or night he or she can fly in Class B C or D airspace in visibility down to a half a mile during the day a mile at night some ILS approaches have higher minimums than that under special VFR which I did use the pilot has no visibility requirement at all but just has to remain clear of clouds so at what point does just one 16th mile visibility become inside a cloud pilot has to make that judgment and the pain passengers in the back get the thrill of watching isn't this like crazy why does the FAA allow this and what can the flying public possibly get out of this kind of additional risk well what you get is an aircraft that can land on a remote highway and pluck your bleeding broken body off to the hospital in 12 minutes instead of an hour which might actually you know save your life you get an aircraft that can fly workers out to oil rigs tweak power lines put out fires pull people out of boats and out of raging rivers or fly people over traffic choked highways for all its technological sophistication of Boeing triple7 or an Airbus can't do any of that only helicopters can do the low and slow for that kind of flying and because they can do that and land almost anywhere they're allowed to operate at lower altitudes and in worst visibility the helicopter accident record is a vivid map of the risks of this kind of flying in eight fatal part 135 helicopter accidents between 2014 and 2016 five involved aeromedical flights one was an oil rig crash and one was a wire strike during a powerline inspection three of these accidents appear to have been a scenario identical to the Kobe Bryant crash that is an unintended counter with IMC followed by a steep turn loss of control and terrain impact all of them commence from the low altitudes where helicopters typically operate and five of the eight crashes occurred at night the NTSB has noticed this risk and in 2004 it recommended that turbine-powered helicopters with six or more seats be equipped with toes or terrain awareness and warning systems this is what a toss display looks like the terrain threat is color-coded red means the terrain is above the helicopters altitude yellow is a cautionary color dependent on phase of flight a year later in 2005 the NTSB recommended that helicopters also be equipped with flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders just as all part 121 airliners have had for years this technology has in arguably helped improve flight safety because it has pinned down accident causes that otherwise wouldn't have been evident it doesn't prevent an accident but points at what happened in the last one the FAA declined to act broadly on either of these recommendations but that's not to say it did nothing in 2014 it adopted new rules and procedures for air medical helicopters including requiring a cheetah's flight data recorders instrument-rated pilots and documentation of obstacles on the planned route to name a few also be if our requirements for air medical flights were made more conservative the overall commercial helicopter fatal accident rate hasn't budged much since the FAA may be changes but they didn't take full effect until just recently more recent accident data suggests a slight downward trend but again these are small numbers a couple of bad accidents can drive them right back up a high profile accident like the Kobe Bryant crash tends to focus public and political attention on aviation safety and predictably a California congressman has introduced the Kobe Bryant and Gianna Bryant helicopter Safety Act it would require the installation of toes and all helicopters and directs the FAA to establish new helicopter safety standards without being very specific about what exactly that means it's this public discussion unfolds you will hear the term equivalent level of safety with the gold standard being the part 1:21 scheduled carriers in aviation safety we never want to give up and say it can't be done or that things are good enough 30 years ago in 1990 the part 1:21 fatal accident rates stood at zero point three to one four hundred thousand flight hours it seems like a small number but today US air - flying 19 million hours a year and if that rate was true today that's more than an accident a week not many people in the industry thought it could be driven to effective zero but it has been for helicopters this will be a difficult challenge safety has always required throwing money at the problem because safety isn't free cause is a possibility maybe synthetic vision used by two pilots who are always required to fly IFR how about an emergency recovery button like cirrus airplanes have case you're not familiar the little blue level button recovers the airplane to level flight if the pilot loses it nice back up at some point however loading all this equipment into the aircraft tanks the economics but the aircraft becomes 100 percent safe because no one can afford to fly it never say never but think about that number when you hear the term equivalent level of safety for a duei by paul bird or ally thanks for watching

Channel: AVweb

Views: 596,567

Keywords: Avweb, aviation, Kobe Bryant, helicopter, S-76, Part 135, helicopter crash, Paul Bertorelli, accident rates, Part 121

Id: lpGl2_fVr2Y

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/apfriedman]

Hadn't seen this posted yet...

As a guy with no first hand experience with operations outside of part 91, and no exposure to "airplanes" with wings that as spin, a video like this is worth it's weight in YouTube ad skips. I feel like I can trust the source and I can say I came away knowing what I don't know (as opposed to not knowing what I don't know.)

As an example: SVFR for part 135 helicopter operators is a different animal than it is for bugsmashers...

[u/Twarrior913]

Great video. Could you imagine a Part 121 crash every week?

[u/jimmyz561]

Those flight requirements for 135 helicopter operation regarding weather is pretty insane

[u/x4457]

Paul's a fantastic reporter but as a 135 captain I feel compelled to say he's painting with an awfully broad brush. Not all 135 operators or mission profiles are created equal (which he alludes to) but I wonder how the numbers change if you remove Alaska from the accident statistics. Doesn't change the video, doesn't change the outcome, but would be curious nonetheless.

[u/[deleted]]

It wouldn't be that hard to just go ifr is my point, for safety sake why not just file. If it's not vfr then don't fly vfr and why we let that decision come down to the operators (they say the pilot makes this call but we all know who really calls the shots).

[u/DrParallax]

Sorry, moronic Monday is over, but I'm wondering; is there something that makes rotor IR much more difficult/dangerous than fixed wing IR? Other than proximity to the ground I guess.

[u/livinthedreamz]

I've yet to read it, but where was the destination for the flight that Kobe was on?

Someone said Camarillo but the pilot took a turn to the South after the 101 and all the pilot would have had to do was fly West to get to Camarillo so he was on a course to go somewhere else other than Camarillo