#116 HELICOPTER TOUR ACCIDENTS | Knee Jerk Reaction Government Officials

Hey, it's Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Online Ground School. I want to give you the scope of the new hangar and we're going to talk about a question that just came in overnight from a ground school member about helicopter accidents and about a recent accident and how accidents play a part in public relations and things that happen with the FAA and so forth to get the full scope of the new hangar. If you're a member and you want to come train with us or you're just coming through and you want to transition through and hang her with us overnight, everything tore up at the moment because we're just. Well, we're not tore up, we're organizing. So we moved the instrument off the dolly to do the buff and shine job. Dolly's ready to go. Holly's thinking about possibly stopping. Holly Gardell, one of our instructors on a ferry flight. But the weather's kind of going kind of nutty. So I told her, well, you're welcome to stop if you need it. So that's part of the fun of the hangar. We have the room to do what we need to do. I just unloaded the jeep. Still have to unload this. Heather will be on her way shortly. She's got a trunk full of stuff. So this all started seven years ago with a little flip video camera. And I started with nothing. So now we got the job of going around and start setting up. But it's funny how you accumulate things, right? Lights, cameras, computers, monitors, TVs, equipment. It's just amazing. So here's your. Here's your first look of the hog studio, kinda. There's our presenting bench and there's the big screen you've been seeing for a while that's now mobile, which is perfect. Everything's going to be mobile with the new studio so that we'll be able to change, move walls. Nothing will be bolted down. Right. And we'll be able to just create green screens and everything. We've got 12 tubs full of equipment. So again, amazing how it all. How it all transpires, right? How the story changes. Here's a bathroom. Bathroom and even has a shower, which, you know, we won't use a lot, but occasionally might be nice somebody's coming through, traveling overnight or you get dirty at the hanger or whatever the case is. So bathroom, water heater, a little kitchenette. We'll get the Heather's coffee pot set up today. And we ought to make coffee here. I got my coffee over here at the table. I'm gonna sit down here in just a second and I'm gonna talk about this member's question. Check out his question on the phone. So. So there you go. There's the full, the full realm of the new hanger. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. And what we're going to be able to do, we just really and truly took hogs completely, entirely to the next level. Acoustic phone foam coming out of our all right, so welcome to day 116. Coffee with Kenny. Probably sound a little rough today. I think I'm getting a cold. We've been working really hard with the big move. But it's all good, right? It's all progress, all moving forward. So from this member. Hey Kenny, I'd like to get your take on the attached link. It appears that one lawmaker is trying to use this tragic, fatal accident as an opportunity to put all helicopter tour operators out of business on the island to please your district. This is an operator that I plan to seek an employment interview with when I move back to Hawaii in a few months. I think it'd be great to hear your thoughts on the effects of the public relations to these types of tragic, unfortunate occurrences on the helicopter industry, particularly the training and tour flight professions, which are often the apprentice and journeyman level of our career pipelines. I think that's a great question for someone getting into the industry and looking at what their employment possibilities are going to be. I first want to say any helicopter accident is tragic, right? And I'm careful to never comment on recent accidents until we know more. So I'm not going to speculate on any particular accident recently. I'm going to answer the question as he's asking it about how do I think it affects the industry. And you know, I know there's been some tour operator crashes recently. I know there's also some news crashes now and then. I still don't think it's as bad as the EMS crashes. I think EMS is probably still the worst. But I also think there's so many scenarios on things that can go wrong. So many scenarios with helicopter accidents, sometimes the pilot's fault, sometimes maintenance. So I think it's very hard to just pinpoint one area of blame because there's always, always, always circumstances for every single one individual accident. And again, I want to, you know, I have to say anytime I hear a helicopter goes down, my heart sinks every single time. So they're always tragic. I always feel for the operators and the pilots and the families and anybody involved, of course, and want to respect, you know, the people involved in these types of things. You know, And I guess I also have to say, you know, a lot of times we have knee jerk reactions or the press has knee jerk reactions, or the FAA or some lawmaker, you know, with time these things settle. You know, the FAA still governs what we do as helicopter pilots. I read the link to this particular accident, you know, and there's all kinds of things flying around and things people are saying and I'm not going to dive into it because I don't know anything about other than what I read in one article. So not fair for me to make any comments on that. I just think, you know, when you're moving on to your career, you have to look at the operators you're going to go to work for. The. There are plenty of safe operators out there in the helicopter industry, hands down, there are people that care. There are people that do things right, they do the proper maintenance and do right what's right, no matter what. With that being said, you're always going to have those unscrupulous operators who maybe start out with the best intentions. But I can tell you firsthand as an operator myself, times get tough and either the people have the integrity or to either shut down or find the money or. I've said it over and over and over, operating a helicopter company is tough. It is not an easy business. And I believe you have to have multiple helicopters and multiple instructors or pilots, depending on what you're doing. They can be profitable and they can be operated safely. But it takes a lot of work. And the operators, you know, the people in charge, have to have integrity and do what's right and do what it takes to have a safe operation. And us as pilots, we have to do the same thing. We have to choose who we work for. And you'll get a feel, you'll see, you'll feel, you know, the scenarios here are endless. There's so much good that goes in our industry, but then there's so much bad too. And that's any industry. It's not just the helicopter world, it really is any industry. So for any one particular individual, when you go to work for your career or go to look at moving your career on, you're just gonna have to look at, you know, going to work and doing what you want to do and do as much research as any of it of any operator that you can. But you also have to be ready to walk away if the, if the situation is right. And I have members that have come to me that were, they started years ago and now they're at the Industry and they, and they call me, text me, email me with issues and problems they see. And it always goes back to the same thing. You're pilot in command, you know, you have to decide what you think is safe and what is not. And sometimes you have to choose to not work for a certain operator. Sometimes you have to walk away. Sometimes you have to be fired. There's one story I don't know if I've ever told this one. A guy that I know who's a mechanic, one of the nicest guys you've ever meet, smart, and he's an airplane mechanic, Helicopter pilot. Airplane pilot. I did, did his airplane or his helicopter ratings for him. And he was at a maintenance job once and there was something wrong, you know, there was something in the annual that he found. He went to the owner in. The owner says, well, I'm getting ready to sell the airplane, you know, so just don't worry about that because. Because we're selling it anyway. And he goes, well, I'm not signing it off. He's like. And the owner's like, well, you will sign it off. And he's like, no, I won't. This is my name, it's my signature. This is my livelihood. I'm not signing it off. And the guy's like, okay, you're fired. And do you think any one of us ever looked down on this gentleman because he walked away from or got fired from that job? Hell no. None of us. Because we knew this guy. We knew the type of mechanic he was, we knew the type of pilot he was. So when the operator was the one being a jerk and asking this mechanic to sign something or sign something off when there was a problem just because he was getting ready to dump the aircraft, those are the kinds of things that go on. So, you know, as far as media hype over, you know, government officials can get all excited and, you know, say whatever they want and raise a big ruckus. But how far does any of that really go? We as pilot in command, we have to make decisions to fly good aircraft. We have to fly and do what we know is right. And, you know, that's all you can really do. So I don't know how well I really covered that. But again, there's so many scenarios here, it's just endless. It goes back to being the best you can be, be as knowledge you can be as knowledgeable as you can be researching the companies you go to work for. Once you start working for them, you'll get a feel of what's going on pilots will tell you, customers will tell you, students will tell you, you'll hear things and know if you have to, you confront management and either you feel like you're, you're either you feel like your thoughts are being taken into consideration and an operator's trying to do the right thing or you'll get the feeling that they're not. And I'm telling you people, this is how it happens. That's the real world. So again, one more time. Any accidents? Horrible. Always, always, always. And I just don't think I'd spend too time worrying too much time worrying about what? You know, legislators, right? Or you know, what they do and what they say and you know, sometimes it's just not, it's just not good to be even be on the Internet if you know, I'm saying it's kind of like Internet helicopter chat rooms. I gave those up years ago because all they do is get in there and bash each other and bash pilots and bash everybody else. So I say be as knowledge you, as knowledgeable as you can be. Be the best you can be, have integrity, do always do what's right and always be ready to do what you got to do. It is about our own safety, it's about our own family. Family's first, right? We want to go home at the end of the day and by applying yourself and being the best you can be and having as much knowledge as what you could possibly have, you're going to know what the right thing is to do. You really are. Alright, thanks for tuning in for day 116. We are going to do some more accident stuff here in the very future because accidents are as tragic as they are. It is good for us to learn, right? And we learn through seeing what happens to other people. We are going to do some more of that stuff here in the future. So I need to get back home, get cleaned up. Heather will be here in a little bit. This is a beautiful thing. This morning I got a call from my daughter early and she was sick at school. So now that where I'm located, not far from the house, not far from my daughter's school, not far from Gloria's mom's house. So this is a great move for me, family first, right? For my own personal well being, this place is the right place to be. And then number two, because hogs comes behind family and myself as it should, it's the best, the best move for hogs coming here. So we'll keep you informed, keep tuning in daily to see the changes and we'll have a big unveil when we have our first set ready to go, because we're gonna have multiple sets, something I've wanted to do for years. One of the guys I've learned from, I actually got to go to California, and I'd been watching him for years, right? And when I got to go to his studio, I went inside and I looked around. I'm like, wow. I realized how what I was building looked like what he had. But his, of course, was much bigger and better and more expensive. But ultimately, you know, his studio was a set here, a set here, a set here, a set here. We can just turn the cameras right to wherever he wants to go. And we're do that same thing here with having a couple of spots set up for, you know, sets that just kind of stay all the time. But we can also. We'll be able to move walls and going this week to look at some portable walls. Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff. Tune in tomorrow for day 117. Do me a favor, like, and subscribe to the channel so you get notification every day. Half an hour before we go premiere each day's video, you will get a notification. So, like, subscribe, click that bell. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you tomorrow.