Pilot flying Kobe Bryant didn’t follow his training, federal investigators say
By Ian Duncan,
The pilot carrying NBA star Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter and six other people didn’t follow his training after flying into clouds and likely became disoriented, federal safety investigators said Tuesday.
Pilot Ara Zobayan should have steadied the helicopter, climbed slowly and declared an emergency to get help from air traffic controllers, National Transportation Safety Board investigators said Tuesday. But the investigation into the crash found that he didn’t take those steps.
Once he was in the clouds, the investigators said Zobayan likely became disoriented as he lost visual references, thinking he was climbing when, in fact, the helicopter was plunging toward a hillside.
Federal safety investigators were meeting Tuesday to determine the likely reason a helicopter carrying Bryant plunged into a Los Angeles County hillside last year.
Bryant regularly traveled by helicopter to avoid the city’s notorious traffic, and on the morning of Jan. 26, 2020, he was taking his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and her friends and their family members to a youth basketball tournament.
The helicopter departed John Wayne Airport and was to fly across Los Angeles to the city of Thousand Oaks, where Bryant helped run a sports academy.
On Tuesday, NTSB Board Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said it would be wrong to call what happened to Bryant an “accident,” instead using the word “crash.”
“We have a very good idea of why it happened and we absolutely know how to prevent these kind of crashes,” Landsberg said.
The board’s meeting Tuesday will conclude a year-long investigation into the crash.
The NTSB board was meeting virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. The five-member board will formally reach a conclusion about the causes of the crash and possibly issue recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration and helicopter companies to avoid similar crashes.
Amid poor weather and low clouds, Zobayan had to get permission from air traffic controllers to pass through airspace with lower visibility than regulations typically allow. A witness told investigators that the Sikorsky S-76B disappeared into clouds as it followed the route of Highway 101 through a pass in the hills, a moment that also was recorded on video.
Zobayan, Bryant’s longtime pilot, tried to pull up above the clouds, according to his radio messages and location tracking data, saying he was aiming to reach 4,000 feet. But data shows the helicopter already had started its fatal dive at that time.
[The Kobe Bryant crash one year later: Lakers’ plans, the probe, Vanessa Bryant’s wishes]
In documents released in June, NTSB investigators indicated that Zobayan could have become disoriented in the clouds, thinking he was continuing to climb when he was descending. The inner ear, which helps humans balance, cannot tell the difference between forces created by gravity and movement, which can cause confusion when it’s difficult to see, NTSB specialist Marie Moler wrote.
“Without outside references or attention to the helicopter’s attitude display, the actual pitch and bank angles have the potential to be misperceived,” she wrote. Moler calculated that Zobayan could have felt as though he was climbing to the right, not diving to the left.
A man who had been drinking coffee outside a nearby market wrote in an email to investigators that he heard the helicopter and recalled wondering why it would be flying in such bad weather.
“Then, all of a sudden, we heard a large BOOM,” he wrote. “We knew at that point that the helicopter had crashed. We could see the wreckage on the hillside, and it was on fire, spreading flames to the nearby grassy area.”
The aircraft had slammed into a hillside near Calabasas, leaving a 24-by-15-foot crater, according to the board.
[Kobe Bryant’s pilot received clearance to fly in poor weather before crash]
The board’s investigators arrived in California the morning after the crash and began recovering debris scattered across the hillside. They used a drone to re-create the flight path the helicopter followed in its final moments and gathered surveillance video footage that captured the flight.
The investigation quickly focused on the weather. The NTSB reported finding no mechanical problems with the helicopter or in its maintenance records that would explain the crash.
The sudden death of the longtime Los Angeles Laker stunned the world and sparked a public outpouring of grief in Los Angeles. Bryant, 41, has been memorialized in hundreds of murals in the city. He was posthumously inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Lakers marked the anniversary of the crash in a low-key way last month, and Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, asked people to focus on the victims’ lives rather than the way they died.
Vanessa Bryant filed a lawsuit against Island Express Helicopters, the company that operated the flight, and Zobayan’s estate. She alleged that they were responsible for the crash because Zobayan had not properly checked the weather before taking off and had flown into unsafe conditions.
[Kobe Bryant was a tireless competitor who became a global sports icon]
In response, Island Express accused two air traffic controllers of fumbling a shift change and not properly helping to keep Zobayan safe. The Justice Department has asked a judge to dismiss the case against the controllers, who are federal employees, on procedural grounds.
The NTSB’s conclusions cannot be used as evidence in lawsuits.
After the crash, NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy pointed to long-standing recommendations by the board that the FAA require helicopters like the one involved in the crash to be equipped with black-box data recorders and terrain warning systems.
Some pilots have questioned how helpful the warning system would have been, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) introduced legislation last month that would require them. Vanessa Bryant has supported the legislation.
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