It is a hard graph to disseminate.

Flying in IFR conditions when your a VFR aircraft is the scariest thing on earth. In 1976 I flew with a co-worker in a Cessna 172 into Tallahassee Florida and all was well and we landed took a break and then departed southeast toward St. Petersburg.

I was flying with a fellow who had been an Army Helicopter pilot and was IFR rated in the military for helicopter, but he was transitioning to fixed wing civil license and he needed to make a trip with 3 legs with each leg 200 miles apart. We had departed Savannah earlier for Tallahassee and now were flying our final leg back to St. Pete.

As we climbed out to about 2000' he went right into the clouds, we were talking to Tallahassee Aproach and I kept hearing aircraft over the frequency calling for landing from the south looking for IFR clearance. We were VFR and climbing in the clouds towards the south, I was feeling very queasy at this point. All I could do was look out at the strobes on the end of each wing tip and see the light bounce off the clouds. He thought we could break through in a few hundred feet. As it turned out, we went to 13,000 feet before we got on top and we also had no oxygen.

I can tell you when we got around Crystal River I was so happy when we started descending and flying in and around the clouds until we were in clear weather below the clouds. It's a trip I never forget.

Crystal River. I've been to that airport a ton.

I'm sure this is universal for all pilot training, but when I was doing my lessons, we spent the first several weeks/months with an hour in the classroom mostly learning how to spot/predict weather before we did a 1/2 hour or so going over checklists and another 1/2 hour at most actually flying the plane.

You just know so damn little when doing VFR flying that EVERYTHING has to be planned out and if you can't plan it, just don't fly it.

Then again, I very much doubt Kobe Bryant's pilot lacked any sort of credentials. I'm sure the dude was certified in every conceivable fashion.

The mishap board is our best shot at determining the causes. But that is slow and deliberate.

TMZ on the pilot from other pilots that TMZ found again:

“ Even more baffling, we've been told the pilot was extremely experienced flying in that area -- and was even a flight instructor. One seasoned helicopter pilot told TMZ, he could not understand why Kobe's pilot would have maintained a speed of 161 knots in such dense fog. One of the benefits of a helicopter is you can go much slower -- even 15 mph -- to gingerly avoid terrain if you're uncertain.”

https://www.tmz.com/2020/01/27/kobe-...ain-slow-down/

And I don’t get all this concern about instrument flight....I’m kidding.
Mostly, says the guy with a Naval Special Instrument card and over 2000 hours of actual IMC time....
It does get your attention. Low level inadvertent IMC in rough terrain carrying pax (1of them Koby) I’m sure had the guy squeezing black juice out of the stick (cyclic) all the way through the end. Collective positioning at impact will be very telling of his last thoughts.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Breaking: Tuesday&#39;s Lakers vs. Clippers game has been postponed out of respect for Lakers organization after the death of Kobe Bryant <a href="https://t.co/Mn1p28aa3J">pic.twitter.com/Mn1p28aa3J</a></p>&mdash; Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1221926024478244864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>




People in this city have been looking forward to this game all season but it makes sense

I hate to say it. What if the pilot was suicidal? Remember the plane crash a few years ago where a pilot did that and took about 200 people with him into the French Alps.

https://i.imgur.com/QXIygJx.jpg



I feel like there's a better way to say that

Yeah very rare of course. we’ll see that too (human factors- divorces, personal life, etc. will be looked at)

Last year I lost a too young father/husband civilian buddy of my son, that in part chose an airline gig after hanging out at my house for over 10 years that my family was sure was due to a suicidal pilot.

It was the Amazon contract carrier that impacted weirdly on final near Houston. My friend was just “dead-heading” in the jump seat catching a ride. The board looked at it all for over a year. Guy was just a bad driver and didn’t believe/follow his systems and instruments. I initially suspect similar here.

Glad I have nfl network

Seems pretty doubtful the pilot committed suicide sounds like the conditions went from OK a few miles away to really bad where they were at.

I asked this earlier and got no response. What should the pilot had done in that situation with the fog?

I'm no pilot, but to me, wouldn't you slow down? Of course, barring any mechanical malfunction.

It also sounds similar to what happened to Stevie Ray Vaughan when he was killed in a helicopter that went into a ski hill near the Alpine Valley Music Theatre.

Altitude?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Camden_PA-24_crash

This says absolutely nothing about crashing into a cliff.

You sure you're not just remembering the Jessica Lange movie about Patsy Cline?