NBC News: FAA overruled safety system that 'could have helped' in Kobe Bryant helicopter crash
The NTSB has previously recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration require helicopters like the one that crashed Sunday to incorporate the technology, but the agency declined, she said. Aviation safety experts have said TAWS systems have saved countless lives."Certainly, TAWS could have helped," Homendy said, but she said she couldn't conclude that its use could have prevented the crash.
It seems that the NTSB have an axe to grind with the FAA about their numerous rejected recommendations!
It is regrettable that the NTSB uses this high profile accident to attack the FAA regarding the NTSB’s TAWS recommendation.
TAWS helps an IFR flight to stay away from terrain. Here we deal with an VFR flight that went into IMC (“conditions”) but never adopted IFR (“rules”). The pilot was acutely aware of the proximity of terrain (so no further benefit of a TAWS telling him) and used his limited or otherwise abilities to get away from it.
Even more shocking I find that the NTSB, of all good people, by making this statement
implies - at this early stage of the investigation - that the accident was caused by pilot error. Because the only possible way a TAWS would help is by supplying information to the unaware pilot in a presumed good aircraft, which he can then use fly a different course. If the a/c goes technical, or the pilot as a medical problem, TAWS would of course not make a difference.
Edit: fixed TAWS-related spelling error.