News Helicopters Collide

[Elvis]

http://www.kpho.com/news/13770683/detail.html

[Jan Pluemer]

 

http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories...h.b85476c7.html

[transquebecniece]

My goodness...so very tragic. My condolences to the media associates, loved ones and friends.

[Heli-pilot]

I get sick watching this...

 

My condolences to family & friends..

 

Here's a picture as well..

http://www.etribes.com/sites/etribes.com/f...%20crash.jpg?78

[ChopperBob]

if anyone is interested, here is a video that I just found of the last seconds of the ASTAR...

 

WARNING! It's not really graphic, but your heart will sink!

 

 

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/3645.html

[HeliFly]

My heart has sunken. That is really to bad. My condolences to family and friends.

[Skidz]

My condolences to all involved.

 

I flew a news helicopter in LA a couple years back. I knew this would happen sooner or later.

 

It's not reasonable to expect an individual to fly the helicopter, direct the cameraman, coordinate with production and do live on-air reports.

 

In LA, we could have as many as 7 or 8 helicopters covering the same event. Police choppers below 500 TV choppers from 800 to 1200 (100ft separation) and radio choppers above that, all in clockwise orbits. Scary...

 

When flying in close quarters like this, you have very little margin for error. If the pilot's attention is focused on the ground, he may tend to loose his positional awareness. One of the two pilots probably didn't notice his altitude was decaying (or climbing) because he was too focused on the chase.

[Jan Pluemer]

@ skidz: Very interesting posting, thank you.

 

According to a user from pprune, the aircraft involved in the incident were both A-Star B2´s and registered as N215TV and N613TV.