ATC can not issue an IFR clearance to an inflight aircraft until the aircraft meets minimum IFR altitude for the route of flight, they have established communication and are able to guarantee IFR separation from all other IFR traffic in the area.  It *may be possible* do that by having the aircraft maintain VFR until reaching a specified altitude and arriving at named IFR reporting point but, realistically, controllers are not going to want to issue an IFR clearance to a pop up aircraft they have not positively identified on secondary radar or via ADS-B.

This is video is a terrible.  The guy would have been just fine if he just stuck to what he saw/heard.......yet he had to make up a story to go along with it for his 5 minutes of fame.  How many times does he say, "I think he was", "He must have", "probably", "apparently", etc?

He starts out with "I didn't see much", then proceeds to tell a 5 minutes story with the altitude, speed, direction, etc.

He says he couldn't see the helicopter, yet he says how high it was and that it was in a "searching hover" doing 3-4 MPH.  (The radar track updated every 5-6 second and never got below 110 knots.)

He claims he didn't see any "rotor wash", but says where it was and how high......(because he's a sound engineer.)

He says he didn't see the impact, but claims they made a left turn into the hill right at the cloud deck......but he didn't see it......says "he flew straight, err, PROBABLY straight into the hill"

Says it "rotors first" because there was no impact noise other than a thud.

"It's hard to fly a helicopter slow, so he had to be in command"

"I THINK he was just disoriented...."

"APPARENTLY it was a twin"

"It SOUNDED LIKE he was in control"

So a TWA hat makes you an accident investigator........shut this guy up!

Yep.

Good  friend of mine used to fuck around in marginal weather.

His luck ran out last May and he splattered it in...

NPR article says that on the flight the day before the destination was Camarillo Airport....not Mamba Sports complex.  I don't think that they were heading directly to the gym.

ATC

This is by far the best thread on it.

Thanks to the OP and posters.

And thanks for telling me I'm right because I was a bit unsure(blind leading the blind?  LOL)

I passed my instrument checkride and then only used it a few times.  Sold my airplane a few months later and have flown very little in the past 2 years.  I only have around 350 hours, so I defer to the experts.

RE your other question, I was going to say that they couldn't give a clearance if the aircraft was below the MVA(which I believe that the helicopter in question was), but it looks like there are other conditions to be met(above MSA etc) per the other poster who cleared it up.

Sorry to hear that.  You do some dangerous flying.

That video was useless. What junk.

No amount of avionics would have fixed this problem.

An autopilot would not have fixed this problem.

A pop-up IFR clearance would not have fixed this problem.

Fixed wing tactics and techniques will not get a scud running helicopter flying into sudden hard IFR down in the hills out of trouble.

Believe it or not, slower, a lot slower, and lower probably would have been the salvation. It would have prevented running into hard IFR to the extent he probably did.

Coming to a hover as best he could and letting down on the radar altimeter would have even been a better bet.

1) do you mean come to a hover in IFR?  I'm not a pilot, but I've read several people above who say that's not an option.  I assume this means instruments-only is not satisfactory for a hover.

2) He knew he was over a populated area/town.  One that I assume was full of utility poles and lines.  Was visibility good enough that he could have come down to VFR before he (potentially) got caught up in poles/lines?  Just curious. Not that the situation would have ended worse had he done so.  Well, actually, I guess he could have taken out some people on the ground, too.

I can get the getting lost/spatial disorientation.  What I don't understand is the speed in the weather conditions (prior to collision), and the speed into the mountain.  Is 5k ft/sec free fall for a chopper?  If so, do we deduce he was on his side, nose, tail, or some other orientation where he was getting no lift from the disk?

1.  Not sure if they had the equipment for true auto hover, but if it had SAS, it would hold itself level if you trusted it to.  Again, every a/c is different, but a lot of autopilot systems in helicopters disengage below a certain airspeed.  These  systems are pretty damn good, but you have fully commit to using them.  It's not anything easy to trust when the fluid in your ears says otherwise.  We used to practice unusual attitudes with it and it would right the helicopter.  pretty amazing if you let it do it's job.

2.  Sure, he could have slowed up and found a spot, but that also requires orientation.  You can't hover or shoot a confined approach if you cannot see enough to keep level or gauge your speed, closure, etc.  The most disoriented  I ever got was on a beautiful clear day.  I was hovering low over the main channel of a large lake getting ready for a speed boat to pass for a photo shoot.  I made the mistake at looking down at the water, seeing how fast it was flowing and it totally f'd me up.  I thought I was going backwards and down, so I nosed over and pulled an armload of collective.  I was so far out in the middle, I didn't have anything near me to gauge my speed, altitude, etc.  It was only a few seconds, but it scared the crap out of me.  Taught me to stay at a safe altitude, let the boat get on course, then fly down to intercept it.

On your question about the vertical speed, my guess is he had lost control and possibly inverted at this point.  You can't get that kind of drop in controlled flight......especially at 140+ kts.

What would make a pilot choose an inland route versus flying over the water?

The ground is your enemy when you find yourself in IIMC. His last mistake was not gaining enough altitude to get the aircraft above all obstacles in the area.

He put all his chips on VFR, and rolled the dice. It's clear to me his plan was to stay low and follow landmarks. You can't see landmarks while flying over a fog shrouded ocean.

Hovering in IMC is absolutely not an option.  But since he was operating under VFR in very restricted visibility, the only way he could have avoided going IMC by safely turning around or landing in an open area prior to going IMC was to fly at a MUCH slower speed than he did.

If you are going to fly helicopters visually in reduced visibility you must do so at a speed that allows you to see and avoid obstacles.  We refer to that as "Not outflying your visibility".

Quick way to make sure you don’t do that is just ask yourself "Could I come to a complete stop PRIOR to the furthest thing I can clearly see?”

If the answer is “yes” you are probably ok.  If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know” then you are absolutely flying too fucking fast.  Flying in poor visibility is insidious.  Conditions change and it is easy to not recognize the changes and mitigate the increased risk.  And, or course, that only works for static obstacles.  It won’t account for the UH-60 coming at you at 60 kts who is scud running too.

I’ve been flying Army helicopters for 33 years.  I’ve found that, generally during the daylight under average conditions, you can correlate safe ground speeds with visibility.  If you’ve got 2 miles, you can likely get by at up to 90 kts.  60 kts is good down to about a mile.   If you find yourself getting chased below 40 kts trying to not outfly your vis the vis is less than 1/2 sm.   And if the weather is below legal minimums OR you don’t feel like you can or should continue you must land or return to where the weather is better.

Steep terrain, over water, poor contrast, night time NVG or not will all make it worse.

I have needed to fly in poor weather way more often than I wanted to.  I have been IIMC.  It sucks.  Being trained, proficient and exercising good judgement can mitigate some of the risk but I don’t see any signs of any of that in this case.

So just to clarify.  Dumb questions here because it has been stated multiple times.

A pilot cannot hover a helicopter in IMC even on instruments?

Even as a VFR pilot I have flown IMC vectors and ILS approaches so I have some experience in the soup.

Is a hover in a helicopter just impossible without ground references?

With limited exceptions that most pilots will not see in the near term, that is correct.  Technology is changing and DOD has a vested interest increasing stability and artificial sensor generated visual cues to overcome dust and fog but implementation is not mainstream now and won’t be outside of Uncle Sugars fleet for quite a while.

Can you balance yourself on a beach ball with your eyes closed, or by just staring at the level of a glass of water you are holding?   Nope.  By the time you'd see the slightest change on the artificial horizon, it would be too late.

Without a SAS you'd be lucky to have a few seconds.  Hovering is a constant balancing act.

Thanks to both of you for your reply.  Yeah, it seems things move faster than the instruments in a helicopter.

I have never been in a helicopter before but will be in one next summer in Alaska.  My wife asked me if I could fly the helicopter if the pilot because incapacitated.  I said "no" and she wasn't happy.  I later told her that I watched a 5 minute YouTube video that should help.  She seemed relieved and said to keep watching the videos.  

Agreed. Can’t believe I read through that cesspool in GD. Significantly better info in the first half dozen posts than the dozens of pages in TOT (the other thread).

That “ear” witness was crazy thorough. Didn’t strike me as looking for his 15 seconds of fame. Maybe veered a little out of his lane. But pretty much gave us the answer we already knew to be the most likely cause. Pilot became disoriented. Put it into the terrain.

Personal feelings about Kobe aside, it’s a terrible tragedy. Seen a lot of comments about what must have been going through their minds in those last seconds. Frankly, I hope it was as quick as the witness described it, and they didn’t even have time to think about their fate. Sucks all around.

Back to the crash...anyone else catch the Juan Brown video? He indicated that the pilot was not only instrument rated, but was an instrument rated instructor. Not sure if that’s accurate or not. Either way, this serves as a reminder that no matter how well equipped, anyone can make mistakes that put you in a spot that’s impossible to get out of.

The only helicopter I have ever flown that could hover in IMC is the CH47F. It is very stable, and has very advanced symbology and hover displays, let alone the coupled autopilot and hover modes in the automation.

Exactly.....he gave you an "answer".   Not what he SAW (because he didn't SEE anything).  He heard something, and fabricated a story.  This drives investigators, detectives, etc crazy.  I used to fly independent accident investigators to crash scenes (retired NTSB mostly) and they'd tell me how bad "witnesses" would screw up investigations because of the stories they'd weave.  They weren't necessarily lying, they'd just make up a story in their head to get past the trauma or because they thought they were helping.  The investigators want to hear what you personally saw......not what somebody else told you they saw, not what you think happened, etc.  Go back and listen to all the probably's, apparently's, I thinks, and must haves......the guy didn't see a freakin thing!!!  He starts off the interview with "I didn't see much" but then tells a 5 minute story.

Being a CFII doesn't make the pilot any more experienced.  I took my CFII ride in the same checkride as my instrument.....the inspector and I just swapped seats after the first ILS.  So 17yrs later and I've still never flown IFR in a helicopter.......100+ hrs of instrument time in the sim and under the foggles, but not many people fly actual in a helicopter.  Instrument rating & CFII is for IFR, not IIMC.  It may help in IIMC if you've flown hardcore actual, but the transition from VFR to IFR is the kicker.

...

This is very good info for those just getting started in aviation. The words "clear of clouds and speed to see and avoid" have actual meaning.

Think of it this way. We have all pretty much driven in hard rain or fog at night. On a clear night, with your headlights you can see pretty far. Let's say 4 seconds of reaction time at the speed your driving.

Now with the inclement wx, you can only see maybe half, or less, as far if driving the same speed. Maybe 2 seconds at best.

Do you keep driving the same speed in bad wx, with less reaction time, as you do in good vis wx? I would bet most people slow down to keep about 4 seconds of reaction time.

Yes, we all see people that will drive the same speed in good wx or bad.

As a former aviation safety guy I call those people statistics.

The key to that last part is the first “i” — inadvertent IMC correct?  Much different than anticipated and planned IMC I would imagine.

You got it.......on an IFR flight plan you fly the flight on the instruments whether or not you can see outside the cockpit.  You can fly in and out of clouds every 10 second, doesn't matter since you've been navigating on instruments since you left the runway.  You should be surprised when you go IMC under an IFR flight plan.  But going from VFR/SVFR to IIMC is another story.

I am relatively lucky in that my career field (LE aviation) we don't fly in lousy weather--due both to the safety aspect, but also because if we can't see the ground, we are of no use to the guys we are working for.  But the few times I have been turning circles over the city or chasing a car, and the weather snuck up on us, and the field quickly went IFR requiring a special back in, less than 3 miles makes me pucker.  I can't even imaging flying right at SVFR 1/2 mile & COC vis mins.

@Bob58 Thanks for the excellent writeups.

Question:

What are the chances that this particular S76 had a FDR and/or CVR?

I just hope SVFR doesn't get thrown under the bus. It's a useful tool if used wisely. Getting out of or into airports without having to fly RV IFR approaches using three county's.
I used it mostly when weather was something like 800' ovc and 6 miles. Mile and clear of clouds not so much.

A lot of SVFR use is by people that know the area. In Korea during the winter we used to get a layer of smog at about 200' AGL that wouldn't clear out until 1100ish. The layer was less than 100' thick, usually, but thick enough to be called a "ceiling". Our airfield was in a valley is why it would hang around so long. Most every where else would be "clear blue and 22" except us.

So we would just do an normal take off, establish level flight, start a climb, maintain airspeed, and punch right though. Call clear of clouds, the altitude and heading you were on, and then the next a/c would take off.

Getting back in we would start our approach along one of the mountains on the windward side. The wind pushes up the hill and doesn't let the layer build along the ground. We would basically fly NOE (< 20' AGL) down the mountain until we were below the layer and then do out normal approach to the airfield. Lead a/c would call clear, what altitude, and direction and the next a/c would descend.

I used this same technique when flying counter drug missions in the LA area to get below the marine layer and into Santa Barbara.

ETA These are not approve techniques nor taught anywhere that I know of. It's something we learned flying in a mountainous environment that would occasionally be wxed in. These are just something we developed to get in and out so we could do our mission.

ETA 2 Again, all my r/w experience is military even though I do hold a commercial instrument r/w ticket. We did some things that I imagine most civilian pilots would have said "fuck no" to.

Someone please tell me this.

There are videos of his copter circling the Burbank airport area but news reports said it was too bad to land there.  But in the video I can clearly see the helicopter from the ground and below his feet was a lot of clear air.  Find a field.  Find an abandoned parking lot.  Land at the airport.

Why didn't he?

As you can plainly hear on the ATC audio he had to wait for svfr clearance through the Burbank airspace so he slowed down and burned circles in the sky waiting.  Ifr traffic has priority when an airport is below vfr, svfr is permitted only if the ifr traffic density is light enough to allow it.

Someone pushing him to "get there" ?

SVFR can be a great tool. We used to use it a lot when the weather observers would call bkn 008 and 50 percent of the field was clear and a million with blue skies.

If the SVFR traffic will conflict with IFR traffic the SVFR traffic has to hold outside of the airspace

Declare an emergency and land.

They weren't asking to land there. They were asking to transition the airspace SVFR

So he wasn't aware of the trouble he was in at that time.

He wasn't in trouble at that time.

As stated, there wasn't an issue at that time.

What likely happened is that he flew from an area of poor visibility to an area of zero visibility, tried to turn around to get out of it, had trouble transitioning to instruments and/or became spatially disoriented, lost control of the helicopter and crashed into rising terrain which was all around him.

Things can happen fast and you can go from decent visibility to really bad/zero visibility in a matter of seconds.  I know, it's happened to me.  Quite unsettling especially if you are not expecting it.  Handle it wrong, and you're dead.

Conjecture on my part at this point yes, but the evidence is pointing in that direction.

MH-65D and E can hover IMC.

For those who are not pilots, this is what inadvertent VFR to IMC means.  Statistically the pilot has 178 seconds to live.  This presumes decent altitude with no obstructions.  Now in a canyon at low altitude my guess is the 178 seconds gets much shorter.

That's for an airplane......it's something like 23 seconds in a helicopter.

Is that what happened to JFK, Jr.?

You and I discussed this in the GD thread on the crash, but these are the exact kind of witnesses I've seen mentioned in a number of NTSB reports. Or, I heard/saw the witness' interview with media somewhere, and then later matched their statement to the final NTSB probable cause report. Let's just say...these kinds of witnesses don't have the best track record.

It seems like 75% of the time you have a guy 55+ who will say "it sounded like they were having engine trouble" and "they were flying really low. Much lower than any planes/helicopters I usually see around here." Sometimes that morphs into statements of certitude if they've already told their story to a few family/friends or the media. "He was having engine trouble. I heard a sputtering noise, looked up, and saw smoke/fire." "The engine must've cutout on him all the way because everything went silent and then I saw even more smoke/fire."

Half the time these guys SAW or HEARD almost NOTHING that is useful to investigators, and their story is often contradicted by evidence from the accident site. What probably happened is they heard the impact, or saw the smoke/fire from the crash site, and a story pops in their head that they remember hearing a plane flying really low, and he must've been having engine problems because he was flying really low, and the engine sounded funny. They forget, or somehow memory-hole, that an aircraft typically has to fly pretty low to crash in the first place.

It's a weird thing eyewitnesses do in these situations. I think you hit the nail on the head. It's to deal with the trauma or they believe it will somehow aid the investigation.

I saw my first plane crash when I was seven years old. Very small plane crashed into the house directly across the street in our subdivision. Pilot and co-pilot were seriously injured, but both lived. I remember being on the scene right after it happened as everyone in the neighborhood ran outdoors. It was a very tight knit neighborhood, so some neighbors, including my father, went to check on the occupants of the house. Plane ended up with its nose in their master bedroom, and with the homeowner (my friend's dad) sitting in his recliner across from it. Thankfully, no fire.

Another set of neighbors pulled the pilot and co-pilot out. I just remember them laying them out in the front yard and that there was a fair amount of blood. One of the pilots had blunt force trauma to the head from impact, and we all know how head wounds bleed. The final cause was fuel starvation due to dry tanks. Hence the lack of fire.

The really ironic thing is that approximately a year after the plane crashed into the neighbor's house across the street, my own father died in an aviation accident. He was a business executive, and the company's corporate jet crashed into a mountain due to fog. Pilots deviated from their original IFR flight plan due to passengers returning late, so the pilots decided to try a little scud-running. They took off VFR and attempted to request an IFR clearance once they were airborne. Classic case of get-there-itis combined with scud-running ending in CFIT.

CVR transcript shows that the pilots essentially became somewhat spatially disoriented. They more or less debated over where the terrain was going to be located per the CVR. And although they were actively trying to avoid the terrain, (a mountain as well as an antenna) they were also dealing with overhead traffic and wx that was completely unsuitable for VFR conditions. PIC was pretty damn experienced. 16000+ hours. First Officer had a little over 3000. I used to have a copy of the full CVR transcript. I think I deleted it years ago in an attempt to get closure.

Everyone was killed instantly. Nine dead. The Kobe Bryant accident's similarities (nine fatalities and a likely cause of foggy wx leading to CFIT) has re-opened some old wounds. Particularly since it was already on my mind a lot some the 29th anniversary was last month.

I'd never post this on GD, and I'm going to take it down in a day or two, but here's a link to the NTSB accident report.

Close to 30 years later, I am still haunted by what happened. To add insult to injury, the crash site was essentially right on the summit of the mountain they impacted. Almost made it.

"There is an impact area on one of the hills and a piece of the tail is down the hill, on the left side of the hill," Homendy said. "The fuselage is over on the other side of that hill and then the main rotor is about 100 yards beyond that. The debris field is about 500 to 600 feet."

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/new-details-shed-light-on-the-final-moments-before-fatal-crash-in-fog-that-killed-kobe-bryant/670100?partner=accu_audience_miximedia

If you’re flying visual and attempting to switch to instrument and something goes wrong I’d think it would be SOP to “climb to safety” as I was always under the impression helicopters need at least 1 of 2 things in an emergency, either altitude or speed.

I thought I read somewhere that pilot was climbing to 4000 prior to accident to get above the fog makes me think he was somehow disoriented with instrument flight.

BTW, not a pilot, LOL

Yes, altitude immediately becomes your friend in that situation while the ground becomes your enemy. You have to get above all terrain in the area, preferably to comfortable visibility.

Thank you for sharing, my condolences to you and your family, I can only hope you all find peace. Such a tragic loss. Thank you to all the pilots who have offered input......