I was wondering do you guys think a drone could cause a helicopter to crash if it was big enough and got tangle in the rotors / mechanism of the helicopter?
I read about people speculating a drone was involved. I doubt that was the case. The ATC traffic is available on YouTube. There talk between the ATC and the pilot about flying into VFR conditions and other traffic in the area. The pilot didn't call out anything before they lost contact.
In general, most helicopter crashes are a result of IIMC to CFIT. (Inadvertent Instrument Meteorological Conditions to Controlled Flight Into Terrain) "Scud Running" is the practice of getting lower and lower under the ceiling and then getting into trouble.
This COULD be the case here, but I wonder why the pilot didn't just request IFR instead of Special VFR and go into the clouds and flight patterns. What little information is out there is the ship and pilot were both certified for instruments. I'll be curious if we are told anything more about this at work in the morning.
And get this all the police helicopters were grounded because of the conditions so I agree I think the pilot should have known better
...So I wonder how much pressure there was on the pilot to get Kobe (his boss) from point 'a' to point 'b' "so we don't disappoint the kids."
I agreeSpecial Visual Flight Rules (SVFR) is not something that ATC grants to a pilot, but rather a set of operating rules that a pilot requests. (EDIT: I should expand upon this a bit. SVFR must be specifically requested by the pilot from ATC. During my instrument training, I was informed that operating under SVFR was, essentially, a good way to die. Filing IFR just takes a few more minutes, and is much, much safer, as it is better to be at higher altitudes under active ATC control than to be low, especially in a hilly area.)
Go back and listen to the ATC communications linked above, and you can hear the controller asking " are you sure you're in VFR conditions?" That's ATC shorthand for "don't be stupid." This is 100% on the pilot.
(Background: instrument-rated commercial pilot, though not a helicopter pilot.)
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