Pilot Error?

A TV chopper reporter dies

In the gizmo-fancying world of local TV news, the helicopter rivals the minicam as the novelty of the moment. Choppers can cost $300,000 or more, but they give some 250 TV station news crews speed and mobility, and serve as remote transmitters for pictures ranging from traffic to catastrophes. But the ratings race can tempt copter reporters to chase sensation, making aerial derring-do part of the story, and to take needless risks.

Within the past few years, broadcast crews have died in helicopter crashes near Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and Miami. Last New Year's Day, a Denver team survived a forced landing and a subzero night spent stranded, after its chopper headed into a blinding snowstorm to cover a small commercial plane crash.

In attempting to match that misguided mission, Karen Key, 28, of Denver's NBC affiliate, KOA-TV, was not so lucky. When word came that a Pioneer Airlines commuter plane was missing in treacherous icy weather, a copter crew from one station refused to take off and another crew turned back in midflight. But Key, the nation's first woman TV reporter-helicopter pilot, pressed on. Within 45 minutes, she and Mechanic Larry G. Zane, 28, slammed into a snowy stand of pine trees near Larkspur, Colo., and died almost instantly.

As Denver reporters dug into the incident, questions arose last week about Key's fitness to fly and her station management's judgment. Roger Ogden, KOA-TV general manager, admitted that the station hired Key knowing that she had been arrested for driving drunk last year. Further, it turned out, she had exaggerated her experience as a pilot, and the station had not uncovered that fact. Insisted Ogden: "Her flying was never cause for concern." But while some Denver pilots termed Key cautious, fellow reporters said they were uneasy flying with her. The windy Rockies near Denver are known as particularly hazardous terrain for even the most experienced pilot.

Key was not qualified to navigate by instruments; on the night she died the cloud cover was at 200 ft. Most disturbing of all, Key had been drinking that day from 9:30 a.m., and her blood-alcohol level of .09% was just shy of legal intoxication.

No Denver station has revamped its policy on using choppers, though Key's crash was the city's fourth in 2 1/2 years. Ogden denies that the stations are showboating. Says he: "News value is the predominant factor in whether we go up."

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