The best laid schemes: Kobe Bryant
I’m not a basketball fan; I stopped watching back in the 1970s. But I’d heard of Kobe Bryant even beore yesterday’s helicopter crash that killed him. He was that big a sports star, and the mourning is widespread.
But although the crash has gotten attention because of the 41-year-old Bryant, he was far from its only victim. One of his four daughters, Gianna (13), died too as well as seven others, including John Altobelli, head baseball coach at Orange Coast College, his wife Keri, and their daughter Alyssa; Christina Mauser (38), the assistant coach for Gianna Bryant’s basketball team and mother of three young children; pilot Ara Zobayan; and Payton Chester, another teen who was on Gianna’s team, as well as her mother Sarah Chester.
The family nature and the youth of the victims lends a special horror and a special poignancy to these deaths. Occurring in adults in the prime of life as well as their children on the cusp of adult lives with a great deal of promise, the deaths twist a knife in most of us because they show how vulnerable we all are, how even the best of luck can run out, and how tragedy can strike with a swiftness and sharpness that can feel unendurable.
As it says in one of my favorite poems
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
May they RIP, and may their families find love, comfort, and strength to endure this and recover some joy in life.
I’m not a big Kobe fan, but he was a helluva player and well-loved by many.
RIP.
The crash investigation will be interesting. Already conflicting reports. The weather was below minimums and most likely the pilot should not have been flying. This afternoon ATC transcripts show ATC warning pilot of too low flight. So all that points to a classic controlled flight into terrain. Yet, the flightradar data shows the helo final speed of 184kts (max design speed is 155kts) with a huge 4,000ft/min descent which implies a complete loss of control. We’ll have to wait for the NTSB report I imagine.
He was balletic at times, leaping, spinning, twirling . . . a beauty doing beautiful things, rhythmically.
Speaking of untimely deaths, one of Garrison Keillor’s best monologues was a meditation on Buddy Holly’s death in a plane crash. Keillor and his best friends, as he tells the story, then had a rinky-dink garage band and were so emotionally moved by Holly’s death they got in a car and drove to the crash site.
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-crowley/buddy-holly-and-the-pharaohs
Coincidentally the monologue starts with a riff on playing basketball on cold winter evenings in front of the garage.
I don’t care what anyone says, those “News from Lake Wobegon” pieces were marvelous.
This was horrible and not only because it involved a very famous person. What his wife and other daughters are going through must be beyond terrible.
I do, though, always find it fascinating how emotional people get about famous people when they die young. Talked to a person yesterday who was not a sports fan but claimed to be so upset by this. Horrible as this is I just can’t imagine myself getting so upset about the death of someone I didn’t even know.
Says something about celebrity, fame and media in our times I think.
The helo pilot, Zobayan, was highly regarded by colleagues. He was apparently given a special exemption to fly by VFR. The audio with ATC is blank at the few minutes of descent (why?) before impact:
find the audio here-
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/euh1i3/kobe_bryant_helicopter_crash_atc_audio/
Sudden pilot cardiac event, maybe?
A terrible tragedy. The S-76 is twin-engined and designed for pilot-copilot crewing and instrument capability (all of my previous passenger experience is with this crewing). I’m certainly no expert but a single pilot crew using VFR flight rules in heavy fog and severe terrain strikes me as a very odd choice. The investigation results will be quite interesting I think.
Cicero, the ATC transcript is interesting. You may be on to something with a pilot cardiac event. Would explain the loss of comm and the apparent loss of control.
I expect that commercial regulations would require a second crew member;but, it would be interesting to know if the aircraft were certified for single pilot at all when operated privately. Some reports suggested that Bryant occasionally flew himself, indicating that he was qualified. So, maybe he was the second crew member. Probably never know.
Local reports say that the LA Sheriff and LA Police had grounded their helos due to the thick fog. Maybe some day we will know whether they were actually on an instrument flight plan, and flying in accordance with instrument rules; or whether they were trying to slip through/under the weather. That would be a fool hardy decision, but one that has killed plenty of people.
It is sad of course. I am not an NBA fan, and Kobe Bryant meant little to me; except that you could not escape the ubiquitous coverage of him if you live in SoCal. Wife accused me of being negative because I found the non-stop near hysteria in the media, including interruption of all TV programming, excessive. I pointed out that very recently three American air crew members died fighting the Australian fires. All were about the same age as Bryant, and left families. They sort of got mentioned in passing. Guess I am an old curmudgeon, but I really don’t consider the loss of a celebrity any more tragic than any other; and especially those who sacrifice for the well-being of others.
‘Guess I am an old curmudgeon, but I really don’t consider the loss of a celebrity any more tragic than any other’
Oldflyer,
That’s my feeling also and I got the same response from people as you got from your wife today when I said I had had my fill of Kobe coverage everywhere.
The coverage of celebrity deaths is not for me I’ve concluded.
Kobe is a hero to a lot of people. There are endless arguments about the GOAT (Greatest of All Time). Kobe is almost always in the top five.
Plus there is another poem which applies, especially to those as young as Kobe:
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
–John Donne
Helicopters are inherently dangerous aircraft — there was just an MH-60 crash in the Pacific off Okinawa. Fortunately, all the crew were rescued.
“The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it’s nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.”
Harry Reasoner
“Guess I am an old curmudgeon, but I really don’t consider the loss of a celebrity any more tragic than any other; and especially those who sacrifice for the well-being of others.”
A celebrity, though, is someone you can actually know in a very weird and superficial way. You get emotionally invested in them in a way you can’t when noble strangers die halfway around the world. And that was even before social media collapsed any remaining distance between celebrity and the public.
With the mass production of fame that took off in the last half of the 20th century, people are now experiencing an extended sense of disengaged loss unlike anything humans have ever seen.
Mike
What Oldflyer said.
And: It’s a tragic loss of parents and their children. Just trying to get to a basketball game. Some things should be postponed or skipped when the weather is foul. So sad for all the families involved. Their lives have changed forever. My deepest condolences to them all.
The truly awful David French has a piece in Time on Kobe that pretty much sums up what’s wrong with our elites today. It’s literally “Yeah, Kobe was a rapist but MY kid was a fan of him so it doesn’t matter.”
Mike
The cost of saving time…
Wealthy people realize time is money, and they pay to save time
Or as the song sings:
“you can spend your time making money, or spend your money making time”
OFTEN people with high incomes try to spread themselves farther by using these expensive means to “save time to have time”
Helicopter:
Kobe Bryant – Going to the next game
Stevie Ray Vaughan and three members of Eric Clapton’s team died after concert heading to Midway International Airport
Bill Graham went to Huey Lewis concert to discuss Lewis performing for him, after he got the yes, he got into a copter along Steve “Killer” Kahn, and Graham’s girlfriend, Melissa Gold, ex-wife of author Herbert Gold.
Troy Gentry died taking a copter to the air port to meet up with his other half and fly..
regardless of the reason, whether it was pilot error, malfunction, California fires, etc… the reason to get into the copter was to save time…
This was also true of The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, and the pilot Roger Peterson who famously died in a plane crash..
Holly chartered a plane to take him and others to the next concert (of course such planes do NOT carry the roadies, and others, so its to SAVE TIME)..
Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup, decided against it given the weather..
to qote wiki: The musicians had been traveling by bus for over a week, and it had already broken down twice. They were tired, they had not been paid yet, and all of their clothes were dirty. The chartered flight would allow them to avoid another arduous bus ride, arrive early before the Moorhead show, do their laundry, and get some rest.
ie. buying time…
the cure?
Better time management and the willingness to say no, i haven’t got it to spare…
Art,
Your argument is a bit off the mark. By your logic no one should fly but take other forms of transportation. Ultimately, the reason people fly is to save time. For me, to visit my daughter in Florida requires a 24 hour drive or an equal and sometimes longer train ride, or a 3 hour flight for basically the same costs. Why not fly?? 6 hours to London via air, or 5 days on an ocean liner?? Air travel is incredibly safe, certainly compared to car travel so why not take advantage of the time savings?
However, your last remark, “the willingness to say no” is a bit closer to maybe what happened. The weather was at minimums and the pilot requested a special VFR. Should he have done that? Should he have told Bryant et al “we can’t fly until the marine layer lifts.”? Maybe. It may have not made a difference. Listen to the ATC that Cicero provided. It shows a pilot in good control and in good communication with ATC until he isn’t. No comms for a number of minutes and the radar data shows an aircraft out of control. If he had a heart attack it could have just as easily occurred in CAVU conditions.
physicsguy, yeah, you can stretch any argument till it breaks… cant you
but most people arent trying to maximize at the expense of other things..
what i am saying is better planning..
you dont charter flights to maximize time, do you?
they do…
you dont take a copter to work another hour at the office
they do
notice that your flights arent out of cycle charters
theirs were..
big bopper was last minute charter snow storm
Bill graham was during huge fires and obstruction so they hit a tower
Kobe was fog
and what about flying yourself? bet his wife’s nagging got Kennedy killed trying to do something he shouldn’t have been doing either..
In many cases, normal flights would not have flown..
Excellent taste in poetry, Neo. I hope you enjoyed Burns Night.