re: Media helicopter crashes live on air in Los Angeles

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Why not just operate a drone man? No need for this.

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Range, speed, ability to to get certain shots are fast becoming less of an issue but current FAA regulations on drone use still make it very problematic.

What part of “In my opinion” did you assholes not understand LOL

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The media is scum

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Absolutely

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they all need to die.

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I wouldn't go that far. Losing jobs and or imprisoned should be sufficient

At 0:08, it appears that the helicopter begins "backing away" from the bus scene...does this make sense if the tail rotor dropped? Is the helicopter moving in reverse that swiftly? Or is it just an illusion and the camera is panning out?

Mid-field crossovers are pretty standard.

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Mid-field crossovers are pretty standard.

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makes sense. only place where there are no planes aloft.

Looks to me like the camera is panning out, they were probably flying towards the bus scene with it oriented on the left side and then zoomed out.

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I don't want to threadjack, but isn't this actually what didn't happen with the Army helicopter and American Airlines flight 5342 at Ronald Reagan airport Washington D.C.?

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No, that accident was the opposite. The helicopter was flying directly through the final approach to land, not down the middle of the airport.

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Looks to me like the camera is panning out, they were probably flying towards the bus scene with it oriented on the left side and then zoomed out.

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I think the aircraft was stationary on the scene at about 500'. When the aircraft started to yaw right, the photog zoomed out to keep the shot.

From the short video it looks like 3 possible scenarios...

1. Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, which would caused the aircraft to yaw right.
2. Engine failure, which would also cause the aircraft to yaw right and would produce the low rotor RPM audio.
3. Settling with power, which could also cause the aircraft to drop and yaw right.

In the first two scenarios, at 500' the pilot was in the dead man's curve (low altitude & airspeed), so it was very unlikely that he would have been able to recover. Especially, in a residential area.

As for the third, an aviator with his experience would have flown out of settling with power with relative ease.

From someone who's worked that aircraft before , the first horn the pulsating one is the engine out horn which happens when the engine falls below a certain percent Ng or compressor speed. The pilot muted that horn and as the aircraft started to descend he would pull up on the collective which would then cause the low rotor RPM horn to go off as he manipulates the collective control the RPM would raise and lower which is why the horn came on more than once. Considering how low and how stationary they were they really didn't have a whole lot of choices where to auto rotate and try to land. Once the power comes off the aircraft is going to try to spin around its own axis from the torque of the main rotor continuing to spin forward flight can arrest this happening so that's why I don't believe this was a tail rotor failure, you can definitely hear the engine / transmission spin down. They were in the height velocity curve a bad section of it called Dead Man's Curve which means if something happens when you are at this AirSpeed & altitude combo there is not much you can do about picking your place to land.