Two News Helicopters Collide In Phoenix
With the huge growth of news helicopters, coupled with competition for police chases by local news stations (anyone who has visited Los Angeles has seen plenty of that) this was a day that you could almost guess was coming. And yesterday was the sad day when two news helicopters collided over Phoenix while they covered a police chase — killing two people in each of the helicopters.
The story in videos:
The disturbing (WARNING) final moments as seen on TV while a news anchor talks to the traffic reporter.
Distraught Fox pilot describes what he just saw from the air.
Channel 5 pans to the crash scene.
Police chases have come under fire in recent years because of “collateral damage” — people who might get hurt during the chase. Watch for there to be new regulations covering helicopters on the scene as well.
The question is going to be how the two copters got so close for the crash to occur. Wind? Too focused on the chase to notice? Did they often get rather close to each other? How and why did it happen?
4 Responses to “Two News Helicopters Collide In Phoenix”
This is the price for news sensationalism. Instead of spending money of investigative reporting, news is now voyeurism. What is the purpose of filming local car chases on a national forum. These car chases are just as bad as Weekly World News, but one knew it was spoof.
Even money says both ‘copters were at the minimum allowed altitude-over-terrain for urban areas. Both at the same altitude chasing the same suspect, with the pilots focusing on staying in place for the camera shots, instead of on the airspace around them, leads to collisions.
Look for any new regs to notice that airspace is three-dimensional, and require altitude assignment from ATC for news ‘copters.
Tully,
Altitude assignment depends on if they were in controlled airspace or not. My guess is that they weren’t. In those situations, it’s incumbent on the pilots to maintain situational awareness and safety-of-flight. It looks to me like one or both were distracted or concentrating on something besides the airspace.
I predict there will be some FAA-mandated changes for helicopter flights in the future.
This is another example of what the preocupation with car chases and other news of the momentary sensationalism causes.
The next tiime this happens, we could be hearing about the casualites on the ground, as well.
In the meantime, what news went unreported because a car chase overshadowed all else?