News Helicopter Safety: Startling Near Misses & Self Reporting

 

The NTSB Wants You To Report Incidents

 

By Donald R. Winslow

News Photographer magazine

GARDENIA, CA (April 15, 2008) – On July 27, 2007, in the skies over Phoenix, two television photojournalists and their two pilots died on a clear blue Friday when their Aerospatiale helicopters collided midday while covering a live news story, a car chase through downtown.

The fatal crash involved KTVK-TV's helicopter, piloted by Scott Bowerbank who was reporting live while flying, and KNXV-TV Channel 15's helicopter piloted by Craig Smith, who was also reporting live while flying. Their passengers, photojournalists Jim Cox from Channel 3 and Rick Krolak from Channel 15, were also killed.

Luckily no one on the ground was injured when the two disintegrating helicopters plummeted to earth and exploded into fireballs when they made impact with the ground at lunchtime in a city park.

The tragedy raised questions about the safety and sensibility of having helicopter pilots do both flying and reporting duties simultaneously, and brought attention to the absence of rules and regulations governing the separation of aircraft in such circumstances.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration investigated the crash, and since then they've started paying more attention to what news helicopters are doing in the skies over densely populated cities, and they're starting to ask questions about whether the news business is doing enough, or doing anything, to insure their own safety and the safety of people on the ground underneath their flights.

The Phoenix news helicopter crash pulled back the covers on a lot of what people believed about the safety record of news helicopter operations. In the course of investigating what happened in the skies over Phoenix, the NTSB has discovered that there are a lot of "near misses" involving news helicopters, and that not all of these incidents get reported to the FAA or investigated.

"Investigating the Phoenix crash we found about 16 near miss collisions of news helicopters," NTSB senior air safety investigator Howard Plagens told News Photographer magazine. Plagens, based in the NTSB's Southwest Regional Office in Gardenia, CA, was the chief investigator for the Phoenix crash.

"I encourage you to tell your [NPPA] members about the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System and put a link to it on your Web site," Plagens said. "These near misses don't always get reported. The photographers and reporters may think the pilot or safety officers will report them. That's not always the case."

Plagens said the NTSB and FAA want to learn more about what's really going on with news helicopter operations, and they believe it may be the case that not all "near misses" get reported.

The NASA Aviation Safety Program is one way photojournalists and reporters who experience a "near miss" or who see another news helicopter's "near miss" can report the incident themselves, online or by mail. The reporting system has four categories of forms (for pilots, for air traffic controllers, for mechanics, and for cabin crew or passengers). The form for cabin crew or passengers can be used to report news helicopter incidents and "near misses," or any other unsafe air operations.

Plagens points out that observing a near miss or incident should be reported as well, even if the person doing the reporting wasn't onboard the aircraft. "Someone from AFTRA (the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) saw a news helicopter and a near midair collision over the San Fernando reservoir" and reported it, Plagens said. The NTSB investigator said the AFTRA source told him that, "In Los Angeles, we have about a dozen near misses a year."

"As part of our follow-up to the Phoenix investigation we've met with pilot groups, in Los Angeles and at the helicopter expo in Houston, and we've had two round-table discussions of the issues," Plagens said. Representatives from the NTSB hope to meet with representatives of the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual convention in Las Vegas this week to discuss safety issues regarding news helicopter operations.

After the Phoenix crash there was much discussion about whether having pilots perform live reporting while flying created an unnecessary safety hazard. Within weeks of the crash, the television stations in Phoenix resumed "normal" operations with pilots flying and reporting live again. Some groups, including the National Broadcast Pilots Association (which bills itself as the "best organization for ENG pilots"), contend that flying while reporting is safe and that what happened in Phoenix, while tragic, was a rare occurrence.

"We've really hammered home the point to the industry that they need to come up with some guidelines – because if they don't act, Congress might act, and if Congress acts then it's a law. The FAA can't change those laws, they can only enforce the law," Plagens said.

The Web site for reporting near misses or incidents is at http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov, and Plagens encourages NPPA members to be aware of it, and to report safety incidents, and to help the NTSB create a more safe operating environment for news helicopters, "before Congress finds a way to get involved."

 

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