Kobe Bryant Crash Puts Focus On Helicopter Safety

Above, departing the airport for an aerial tour of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Kobe Bryant helicopter crash brought to mind the two times I've flown in a helicopter.

The first time was a tour over Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in 2016 on the Big Island. In back of my mind during that ride, although pleasant and interesting, was the thought about having some sort of failure that would send the helicopter into a bubbling volcanic caldera.

The second time was when I was flown to a hospital in Twin Falls, Idaho in an air ambulance from Wells, Nevada after I had a heart attack in 2018. During that flight, I was more concerned about reaching the hospital as windy conditions made a normally 20-minute flight into a 40-minute flight than I did about any catastrophic failures of the chopper.

Naturally, a tragedy like the Bryant crash will put a focus on helicopter travel.

Hawaii Public Radio takes a look at helicopter safety.

They begin with:

For the vast majority of Americans, helicopters are hardly a routine form of transportation. But a high-profile helicopter disaster — like the crash in Calabasas, Calif., that killed Kobe Bryant and eight other people on Sunday — can draw widespread attention to helicopter safety. 

Helicopter rides are significantly riskier than commercial airline flights, but not as dangerous as a trip on a personal plane. And some trips — like personal or private helicopter rides — are far more likely than others to end in a fatal accident. 

"I think it is natural to the public, whenever an accident happens, to start to question the overall safety of a certain type of flying," says Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace and occupational safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "I would just caution people to be patient and to let the investigation play out so that we can figure out what happened." 

Commercial plane travel is extremely safe, despite recent catastrophes like the Boeing 737 Max crashes; in many years the fatal accident rate in the U.S. is zero. Helicopters are more dangerous, according to data from the federal government, with a fatal accident rate of 0.72 per 100,000 flight hours in 2018. 

But general aviation — like recreational flying — is even more dangerous than that, with a fatal accident rate of more than 1 accident per 100,000 flight hours in 2018.

To read more, go here.