Kobe Bryant and daughter killed in helicopter crash

[Megatron96]

The main issues with private aircraft isn't the aircraft itself; it's the pilots. The vast majority of private pilots don't train for emergency situations often enough, if at all. Professional pilots train for all manner of emergencies regularly.

So when something goes wrong for a private pilot there's usually the "oh shit!" moment, which can last several minutes in the worst cases. Which is usually how those pilots crash. But even if they only freak out for ten seconds, that often can be the difference between surviving and not. Professional pilots train for emergencies, so when something goes awry, it takes just a few seconds to assess and evaluate the issue, and then decide on a course of action and run through our memory items. We call this process an OODA loop (google it). Most private pilots don't have this system instilled in their muscle memory, as it were.

There's also the issue of maintenance, and private pilots tend to have a lower expectation of what is proper maintenance than what a commercial operation would. But at this point we don't know exactly what the real issue was, so I can't comment on that in this case.

I also don't know anything about the pilot, but I would think that Kobe Bryant would have a highly experienced pilot for his helo. The results of the NTSB's investigation will be interesting.