Both aircraft fell into an open area of a city park. If either of the burning wrecks had fallen on a group of children there, a crowd of people on a street corner, a bus, a building or even cars at an intersection the death toll could have easily hit ten times that number. Two other helicopters were also covering the same event and police air unit was in the same airspace tracking the vehicle. Only extremely good luck prevented involvement of other aircraft and or people on the ground.
If I operate an aircraft above people I should do it as safely as is humanly possible. I understand that one hundred percent safety is not possible. Let's face it, any aircraft, anywhere, at any time can come down hard be it Air Force One, a commercial airliner, a home made aircraft or a plane under test. Bur risks can be mitigated or increased and the people on these aircraft did things to increase the risk. I have heard people say the people on those birds asked for it. Let me be blunt. With the exception of those legally sentenced to death nobody deserves to die.
When I board an aircraft, I take a risk. The person on the ground below me has not taken that risk so I have no right to do with an aircraft what can raise risks on the ground above anything that is reasonably unavoidable. So was this a reasonable risk or an unavoidable accident?
The NTSB will ultimately issue a finding and I will at that time read the whole report that may span more than a few dozen pages. They will look at everything that could have been a cause or contributing factor and anything that may be wrong even if it did not contribute to the accident. No factor will escape scrutiny. This is the only way you can be sure of your conclusion. Sometimes those non-contributing factors result in changes to aircraft, training or procedures that prevent future accidents. Allow me to give you a glimpse of what the NTSB will most likely find.
Aircraft: It is likely that both aircraft will be cited for some maintenance deficiencies albeit none major unless the accident is judged to be the result of a failure of the controls or engine of one of the aircraft. I consider this to be very unlikely.
Air Traffic Control: It is unlikely the ATC will be cited for the crash because the aircraft were not in contact with ATC. They will listen to the ATC tapes from before the handoff, they will probably go back to before the first bird took off and look at what happened till the last one landed and if there is anything that is not perfect it will be noted. If there is a recording of the radio channel they were using to communicate with the other aircraft it will be included. I am not sure if helicopters carry cockpit voice recorders, if they do those will be reviewed. An "aw shit" muttered by pilot or an audible engine warning alarm just before the sounds of crunching metal could be a clue. Even the sound of the engine could provide information, i.e. an increase or decrease in power settings.
Passengers: The passengers will be considered too. Their weight will be checked along with everything they took on board. Any other aspect of their contribution to the flight will be considered. One question will be continually asked, "Did they or anything they carried or did contribute to the accident?"
Pilots: The pilots will be scrutinized. Their training, experience, simulator times, test scores, infraction history if any, health records, autopsy records, arrest records, drug tests, what they did that day and even sleep estimates will be considered. Anything that might impact the pilot's ability to safely operate the aircraft is fair game. Let's face it. Unless there was an unlikely mechanical failure, this was a pilot error. When operating under visual flight rules the pilot is responsible for avoiding terrain and other aircraft. Someone almost certainly failed in that portion of the job.
So how safe is flying? It depends on what you consider flying. In the US we are experiencing about twenty fatalities and thirty serious injuries due to commercial airline crashes with about eighteen million hours in the air. This translates to less than one fatality for every million flight hours and one injury for every six hundred thousand flight hours. Note that flight hours are not passenger hours, a Metro with nineteen passengers counts the same as a full 767. The number of "passenger hours" of commercial air passengers has to be well over two billion. Flying in commercial aircraft is safe.
But if you look at civilian helicopters you see one hundred sixty two crashes in 2006 with forty two deaths. This is twice the number of deaths of commercial flying and let's face it, the number of hours helicopters are in the air is less than one percent of the commercial hours and the average number of people on the helicopter is less than a handful compared to over a hundred average on each commercial aircraft. The hours of exposure is miniscule, the death toll is terribly high, possibly more than a thousand times as risky. And the reasons are many, some tied to the nature of a helicopter and some tied to the kind of flying they do.
