OT Kobe Bryant RIP

[CEB]

https://www.tmz.com/2020/01/26/kobe-bryant-killed-dead-helicopter-crash-in-calabasas/

 

 

[CEB]

Other outlets have started running with the story.

[Docbop]

That is really sad news. Being an old Laker fan and in my computer programmer days worked for UCLA and you'd see Kobe around campus taking classes in the off season. Thank you Kobe RIP.

[zephonic]

OMG!

 

RIP Kobe Bryant

[Doerfler]

confirmed by ESPN. RIP

 

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28569438/kobe-bryant-dead-helicopter-crash

[Dave Bryce]

No words. Unbelievably sad.

 

dB

[TommyRude]

Terrible news. Kobe was such a juggernaut when he joined up with the Lakers, and the era of the 3-peat it seemed like all of L.A. was united behind the Lakers and Kobe. RIP

[Jazzmammal]

Now they're saying his oldest 13 year old daughter was with him, they were going to the Mamba Center in Thousand Oaks for a basketball tournament that she was playing in.

 

How sad can this be, who else was on board?

 

Bob

[Geoff Grace]

So shocked to hear this, and his daughter too. Tragic.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[wd8dky]

Prayers for his family. He was so fun to watch playing and competing. RIP.

[Dave Bryce]

 

dB

 

[zephonic]

I only ever attended one NBA game, regular season Lakers vs. Knicks at the Staples Center back in 2009. The difference was astounding, whenever KB would be on the floor, the pace picked up tremendously, both teams playing so much faster. Whenever he sat out, the game would slow down to normal human speed.

 

I"ll never forget that, to see how much difference one player could make. It was a lesson I hope to never forget.

[Sam CA]

Very tragic indeed. Just read this:

 

"Paramedic teams rushed to the site, but determined that all nine people â eight passengers and the pilot â had already perished.".

 

So 9 people including the pilot.

[CEB]

Small world. Just found out the helicopter that crashed belonged to my son"s workplace. Illinois Dept of Transportation until the governor sold it in 2015 as part of cost cutting measures.

 

PS - If Facebook isn"t lying.

[ProfD]

Really sad news considering Kobe was in the prime of his life, retired and being a family man. Even more sad that his daughter is gone too.

 

Kobe's legend as an athlete is cemented. He touched many lives on and off the court. RIP Mr. Bryant.

[elsongs]

I live in Los Angeles and am a Lakers fan myself...

 

I was at a gas station filling up my tank right after my church gig this morning, and saw a message on a friend's FB status saying "Kobe Bryant Died?!?!?!" I scanned Twitter ASAP and found a lot of unconfirmed talk, so I didn't bite. After I was done getting gas, I drove home and I heard reports on the local sports talk station. On my way home, I could see people walking down the street, waiting at bus stops, or standing outside their cars in parking lots, all looking at their phones with exasperated or shocked faces. I know what they were all looking at. Once the L.A. County Sheriff's Department confirmed there was a crash and one of the local news stations broke the story, just before noon on Sunday, it all became real.

 

Today was the Grammy Awards, and guess where they were held -- the Staples Center, the very place not only where Kobe won 5 championships, scored 81 points, and played his final game, but where Kobe Bryant's #8 and #24 retired jerseys are hanging from the rafters overlooking the crowd.

 

I'm kind of speechless, but I was fortunate to have been able to witness the career of a legend with my own eyes at Lakers games at Staples Center, and after the Lakers championship parades. There are crowds gathering at L.A. Live (next to Staples Center), Leimert Park (the cultural center of L.A.'s African American community), and along Las Virgenes Road, right below the helicopter crash site, where the smoldering debris from the accident is in plain view up the hill. Everyone in this city is taking this thing very hard.

[Jazzmammal]

I'm still shocked and speechless. I've managed to put it out of my mind for part of the day but then I talked to several of my friends at different times today and it all came back. Everybody is just totally bummed, shocked, unbelieving. Yes, I'm a Lakers fan and yes, people die every day in car crashes, accidents and other ways. They're all tragic in their own way but somehow this is different. This is almost as bad as when my family suffered an unexpected death 10 years ago. Bad enough if it was just him but his daughter too? Now we find out three of the people on board is a baseball coach, his wife and their daughter who was going to play in the tournament with Kobe's daughter. They have two other children at home who just lost their parents and a sister. He was the coach of the college team for 26 years, was very well liked and that whole town is in total shock. Now it's a completely over the top double tragedy and we don't know yet who the other four are. It's overwhelming. I know on one level it stupid to feel this close to an athlete I never met but for whatever reason Kobe was special and he touched a whole lot of people in this area.

 

I guess part of it is his age, his greatness, his optimism. openness and being willing to help any player who asks. And the fact he was going to do amazing things with the rest of his life. He tweeted LeBron to congratulate him last night when he broke his scoring record to move into third place all time. This is after an interview two days ago where he was asked about LeBron probably breaking his record next game and he said he looked forward to it, he thought it was a good thing and it would move the game that much further forward. Great thing to say, LBJ did break his record and now this happens the very next morning. They're playing tomorrow night at Staples and it's hard to imagine what the mood is going to be there.

[UnderGroundGr]

Very sad news.

R.I.P.

[LX88]

Helicopter accidents are how we lost both Stevie Ray Vaughn and Bill Graham.

 

Details are emerging...It sounds like there was a combination of fog issues and engine failure.

 

This of course is shocking and it must be particularly so for all L.A. residents and basketball fans everywhere. Being from the Portland area Kobe and Shaq were the ultimate opponents .Regardless, there are no words to describe this kind of loss. It's horrible and unthinkable.

 

A great great talent and a testimony to human potential .

 

 

 

 

[Adan]

Not that most of us even a have a choice between driving and riding heli's, but I was curious anyway and found this:

 

"Still, it"s possible to do a little speculation with the data that are available. Between 2005 and 2009, there was an annual average of 1.44 fatalities (PDF) per 100,000 flying hours in nonmilitary helicopters. Over the same period, there were 13.2 traffic fatalities per 100,000 population in the United States annually. Since the average American spends around 780 hours per year (PDF) in the car, that means the fatality rate per 100,000 hours of driving time is just 0.017. Based on hours alone, helicopters are 85 times more dangerous than driving.

 

Helicopters cover a lot more ground in an hour than a driver on the New Jersey Turnpike, so it might be better to come at the question from another angle. There are approximately 0.8 deaths on the interstate highway system for every 100 million miles traveled. There have been a fair number of studies on the average speed on the interstate system with varying results, but the average is probably somewhere around 68 miles per hour, give or take a few mph. That means it took drivers approximately 1.47 million hours to travel those 100 million miles, yielding a fatality rate of 0.054 per 100,000 hours in the car. By this measure, helicopter flying is just 27 times more dangerous than driving."

 

[hardware]

Long live the King.

[Jazzmammal]

Now more info is coming out. Kobe wasn't flying it, there was a pilot who by all accounts was a pro. Thousands of hours experience, he was an instructor, very level headed, not the type to make mistakes. Still, no co pilot which that chopper type usually has. The weather was bad enough that LAPD had grounded their choppers. Kobe's pllot was fully instrument rated but with the rules of that and the weather, flying IFR could have added over an hour to what was scheduled to be a short flight. The pilot asked the controller for a special VFR clearance meaning visual flight rules where he flies just with his eyesight to the ground. That was granted so he could head straight to the Mamba Center and not be delayed.

 

The report I read says the ship flew into the side of a mountain at 185 mph at 1,400 feet and completely disintegrated. He was supposed to be at 2,500 but it was very foggy. It's still possible there was a mechanical problem but it's sort of pointing to pilot disorientation, or maybe a combination of the two. It does have a black box so that will most likely tell the tale. I read an interview with the former pilot of that chopper and he said it was always perfect, very well maintained. It's a twin engine turbine which is very reliable and it can fly easily on one engine but still, even the very best equipment can have a failure.

 

Now we know the final two passengers was a lady coach and her daughter. So it's three and probably four families now after we hear more about the pilot.

 

Just tragic.

 

Bob

[EscapeRocks]

The Sikorsky S-76 is certified as a single pilot operation, given its excellent auto-pilot, and instrument package.

 

 

The pilot was clear of clouds and was flying "Special VFR" thru the area due to the restricted airspace around LAC, BUR, and VNY. This very common. According to METAR that I've seen, he was able to maintain VFR conditions on top of the fog, while maintaining the controller specified altitude.

 

Basically the vfr corridor, and the "Special VFR" clearance has helicopters follow the highways in this area. In fact at one point he was instructed to a holding pattern just northwest of BUR until traffic from the northwest was cleared into BUR for landing.

 

Some reports of people on the ground of what they heard BEFORE the crash indicate a possible mechanical failure of some type. What, who knows. We do know the helo descended briefly, then went into a steep climb, before eventually contacting the terrain at excessive speed.

 

Until NTSB can reconstruct, we won't know.

 

Just for clarity, I am a Licensed Pilot (since 1987) with MEL and instrument, and a rotor craft endorsement (though out of date), haven't flown a helo in 20 years. I also used to hold A&P license when I thought aviation would be my career. Now I just fly airplanes for fun.

[Jazzmammal]

Good to see this from a pilots perspective. I went back to the article I read earlier and just noticed it's from a UK website but they sure have a lot of detail about this, much more than local news outlets. Here it is:

 

https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/27/bizarre-flight-path-kobe-bryants-helicopter-crashed-mountain-12132440/

 

Bob

[EscapeRocks]

Holy crap there"s a lot of just plain bad information.

 

Who ever the reporter is completely misrepresents some of the basic facts.

 

First it wasn"t a bizarre flight path.

Next, this particular flight following the highways while VFR is at the direction of the controller in that area.

 

The 'circles' they flew was the directed holding pattern as directed by SOCAL approach

 

You can fly above the clouds VFR.

 

The fact the police aviation did not go up that morning does not mean all aviation should be grounded

Their primary focus is flying a LOT lower over the streets.

 

The 'still to low' was simply the controller saying they were still to low for center"s radar for flight following, which is something pilots can request.

 

Ugh.

 

Yes factual information in the article is correct.

 

The reporter then used too much uneducated interpretation.

 

Could it have been weather? Of course.

Personally, and this is my opinion only, I think it"s a combination of a mechanical issue and the weather.

 

The one pilot is correct that a chance of total engine failure is minute.

However they could have tossed a blade of the tail rotor, causing instability, yet not too hard for an experienced pilot.......but add in the weather factor, and now your hands are full. Single pilot or dual pilot.

[Bill H.]

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/kobe-bryant-believed-dead-in-helicopter-crash/

 

Flight path and data. It appears that the pilot was visually following the 101 through the hills, but somewhere around the Las Virgenes Road interchange veered south briefly in it's general direction before taking a left into the mountains.

 

I'll leave it to those familiar with the area and the pilots in the group to take it further (if they wish). Tragic loss

[zxcvbnm098]

Las Virgenes Rd. is also more commonly referred to as "Malibu Canyon".

 

I can't fathom why he would have gone south on Las Virgenes and then (left) into the mountain when Thousand Oaks is directly west on the 101.

 

What a tragedy.......

[Bill H.]

 

Google Maps has ID'ed the site as the Kobe Bryant Memorial Site. If you zoom in and out, you'll see the crash marker and also terrain elevation of the area. This wasn't even 1000 feet up, and there would have been mountains much higher coming up if they could have somehow continued. Why would he have been descending while heading towards them?

 

Sorry guys I'm just trying to sort this out - just devastating

 

map

 

 

[EscapeRocks]

Google Maps has ID'ed the site as the Kobe Bryant Memorial Site. If you zoom in and out, you'll see the crash marker and also terrain elevation of the area. This wasn't even 1000 feet up, and there would have been mountains much higher coming up if they could have somehow continued. Why would he have been descending while heading towards them?

 

Sorry guys I'm just trying to sort this out - just devastating

 

map

 

 

 

At the time he began going south instead of staying above 101, he let ATC know he was climbing to 2500 feet agl to stay above an upcoming cloud layer. A totally normally procedure.

This why...again in my opinion only... they suffered some time of mechanical issue. The helicopter descended rapidly with no warning. Over 4000 feet per minute down, at 187 MPH.... That is not controlled flight.

 

Something was very wrong at that point. I don't believe this is a regular case of CFIT: Controlled flight into terrain.

[Bill H.]

Thank you David.