Pilot in Kobe Bryant helicopter crash overstepped flight rules in bad weather, says NTSB

Pilot in Kobe Bryant helicopter crash overstepped flight rules in bad weather, says NTSB

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The comments were made during a meeting of the National Transportation Safety Board that is about to define an official cause of the January 26, 2020 accident that killed Bryant, his daughter, the pilot and six others.

The meeting, still in progress on Tuesday morning, will present possible long-term safety recommendations as a result of the accident, including more strident calls for greater safety training for helicopter pilots on how to avoid inadvertently flying into the clouds.

“We use the term collision instead of accident,” said NTSB vice president Bruce Landsberg. “An accident (yeah) just something that is unforeseen, unpredictable, if you want. Unfortunately it was not. “

At the meeting, investigators said that Island Express pilot Ara Zobayan may have felt pressured to act for a high-profile client and continued to fly in adverse weather conditions.

They said he climbed what the witnesses described as a “cloud wall”, possibly became disoriented and unconsciously turned into a hillside obscured by clouds that he knew was there.

“It’s not like … the pilot was flying, he didn’t know where the hills are and he fell on the side of a hill,” said NTSB President Robert Sumwalt.

The investigators said the helicopter was equipped to fly in the clouds with the pilot operating exclusively in reference to instruments – known as Instrument Flight Rules or IFR – but the charter’s Island Express agreement with the FAA only allowed flights where the pilot could maintain vision ground contact, known as Visual Flight Rules or VFR.

“It looks like these flights should have been operated under IFR,” said Sumwalt.

All 9 people on board died

The helicopter crashed on mountainous terrain in foggy conditions in Calabasas. Passengers were on their way from Orange County to the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks for a youth basketball game in which Kobe Bryant would coach and Gianna and two others on board would play.
Young athletes, baseball coach and mothers. What we know about others in the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant

In addition to Bryant, 41, and Gianna, 13, the accident took the lives of teammates Payton Chester, 13, and Alyssa Altobelli, 14; Payton’s mother, Sarah Chester, 45; Alyssa’s parents, Keri Altobelli, 46, and John Altobelli, 56; technical assistant Christina Mauser, 38; and the pilot Zobayan, 50.

All nine on board died of blunt trauma, and the form of death was accidental, according to the coroner’s office.

Bryant, a 41-year-old 41-year-old All Star who won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, had made the trip to Thousand Oaks several times as an academy coach.

The pilot seemed to be disoriented in the fog, previous documents show

Climate and visibility were a pre-flight concern, and Zobayan discussed the plan to proceed in a group text before the trip, show the NTSB documents released last year. Visibility was so low that morning that the Los Angeles Police Department decided to suspend its helicopters.
During the trip, the pilot seemed to be disoriented in the fog, the documents released last year by the NTSB show.
During the flight, Zobayan told a controller in a final communication that he would climb up to 4,000 feet to go over the clouds, NTSB said last year.
The radar showed that around 9:45 am, the spacecraft rose about 2,300 feet above sea level and turned left, before descending at a rapid pace. it fell off the radar at about 1,200 feet, near the crash site, the NTSB said.

The first 911 call for the flight came at 9:47 am, said Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Here's what happened minutes before the Kobe Bryant helicopter crashed

The helicopter crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, and parts were found scattered over an area that extended up to 600 feet, the NTSB said days after the incident.

In a February 2020 update from the NTSB about the accident investigation, the board said there was no evidence of engine failure. At the end of that month, he issued a preliminary report highlighting the cloudy weather in the area that day.
Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Villanueva after the fall of eight police officers taking pictures of the scene and the dead victims. A leak from the department prompted TMZ to break the news, and fans flocked to the site.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a privacy invasion bill in September that would make it illegal for early respondents to share photos of a deceased person at the crime scene “for any purpose other than the official purpose of law enforcement” .

According to the new “Kobe Bryant Act”, which went into effect this year, a rescuer found guilty of a misdemeanor crime could be fined up to $ 1,000 for violation.

CNN’s Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

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