Fuck helicopters too. Death traps for the privileged.

Uhhh…look I know a lot of rich people own helicopters…but they’re absolutely useful for search and rescue, power line maintenance, medevac, or just getting to certain inaccessible locations for whatever reason. Like private helicopters, okay, that’s bourgeois decadence, but helicopters in general can be super useful if the trip is worth the risk.

Edit: from the article:

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.

“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.

Guzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to do an autorotation maneuver to use the wind to get the rotor moving, so he could help cushion the impact. But there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.

Sounds like a mechanical issue. News choppers are supposed to have a pilot focused on keeping the chopper in the air and a separate person to do news stuff. Sounds like they did that here, and the chopper went down for an unrelated reason.

Rescue helicopters and air ambulances are great. News helicopters can be pretty awful. They can loiter in groups for quite some time, and the noise / vibration can be terrible. I never mind the odd air ambulance going by, but I really do not care for news choppers.