I fly for a living. This accident is a classic CFIT— Controlled Flight Into Terrain. It is a tragedy, and frankly I was dumbfounded to hear, that the helicopter was not equipped with TAWS— Terrain Awareness and Warning System. It takes GPS position, altitude and direction of flight and continuously compares it to a terrain database and issues specific warnings when flying towards terrain. It’s relatively cheap as things aviation go. There’s no reason beyond simple false economy that TAWS was not on that helicopter, especially since they typically fly close to the ground. And where this helicopter was operated, Southern California, it was critically important to have it. There is rapidly rising terrain scattered all over the place and there have been many, many CFIT accidents, both rotary and fixed wing, there over the years.
Big airplanes have EGPWS— Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System. It functions in much the same way as TAWS. It’s the single biggest advance in safety in my 30 years of flying big airplanes. Since it came out, CFIT has nearly disappeared in airplanes so equipped. Before EGPWS, there were usually several big airplane CFIT accidents every year worldwide.
