SAD NEWS: Minnesota’s star quarterback was killed in a plane crash.
USA TODAY Sports is commemorating the one-year anniversary of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and eight others with a six-day series of stories, photos, and videos about the Lakers legend and the aftermath of his death.
The initial reaction around the world was shock when the helicopter crashed into a California hillside on the morning of Jan. 26, 2020, killing Kobe Bryant and the eight other people on board.
The next question was, “How?”
How did what appeared to be a routine trip to a youth basketball game turn tragic? How did Bryant’s helicopter, which he had been using for years, suddenly crash?
How could something like this have happened?
Nearly one year later, the facts surrounding the crash – from the pilot’s experience, to the weather conditions, to the helicopter’s safety features – are known. And a final determination on what caused the crash is now just weeks away.
The National Transportation Safety Board is set to release its final report on the incident on Feb. 9, including a proximate cause and subsequent safety recommendations.
In the meantime, the board has released 1,852 pages of factual evidence collected during its investigation, including interview transcripts, email records, text messages, photos, meteorological reports and video footage from cameras in the area.
“Accident investigation is really like putting a puzzle back together,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a former NTSB investigator who is now an associate professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
“(It’s) really a meticulous process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It requires a lot of digging, a lot of research.”
As investigators put the finishing touches on that final report, here’s everything we know about the crash, based on documents released by the NTSB to date
At 8:39 on the morning of the crash, pilot Ara Zobayan sent a text message to the small group of people coordinating Bryant’s trip – including his drivers, concierge and a representative from the helicopter company.
“Heli at OC,” Zobayan wrote. “Standing by.”
Thirty minutes later, the helicopter was in the air, traveling from John Wayne-Orange County Airport to Camarillo, California, where the passengers would then be driven to a youth basketball game in nearby Thousand Oaks. Bryant was joined on the flight by his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna; John and Keri Altobelli and their daughter, Alyssa; Sarah Chester and her daughter, Payton; and Christina Mauser, an assistant coach.
The helicopter flew north for about 15 minutes before slowing down and circling near Glendale to make way for air traffic at a nearby airport. Then it followed a highway into the hills near Calabasas, flying between 400 feet and 600 feet above the ground.
“You just going to stay down low at that for all the way to Camarillo?” an air traffic controller asked Zobayan.
“Yes sir,” the pilot replied. “Low altitude.
Minutes later, there was a shift change at the Southern California TRACON, which provides air traffic control services to airports in the region. And the helicopter was heading into increasingly mountainous terrain, where visibility that morning was poor.
When the new air traffic controller contacted Zobayan, the pilot said he was climbing above the clouds, to 4,000 feet. Instead, the helicopter got no more than 1,600 feet above the ground before banking left and descending rapidly, crashing into the hills.
“That combination of the low-lying stratus layer, and also the relatively high-rising terrain – (it’s) a common and, really, a deadly combination,” said Jack Cress, a former helicopter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps who is now an instructor in the Aviation Safety & Security Program at the University of Southern California.
Bryant regularly traveled by helicopter during and after his NBA career, in part to avoid the oft-gridlocked traffic in Los Angeles. And he regularly chartered flights with Island Express Helicopters, including 13 trips in 2019.
In fact, the helicopter involved in the crash – a Sikorsky S-76B – was the same machine that transported Bryant to his final game with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2016.
Cress said the Sikorsky S-76 is generally well-regarded among pilots and has a strong safety record over decades of use. He noted that it has been the “helicopter of choice” for Queen Elizabeth II, among other top dignitaries, since 2009.
A Sikorsky S-76B helicopter is shown, the same model that crashed Jan. 26, 2020, killing Kobe Bryant and other others.
MATT HARTMAN, AP
“They just don’t fall out of the sky,” pilot Kurt Deetz, who previously flew Bryant in the same helicopter, told CNN last year.
The NTSB has examined the helicopter itself as part of its investigation, including both maintenance records and physical evidence obtained at the crash scene. It said in a preliminary report last year that the engines had been found near the wreckage and showed “no evidence of an uncontained or catastrophic internal failure.”
“I haven’t seen anything in the data that I’ve looked at that would suggest that there was anything physically wrong with the helicopter, that would cause an accident,” said Brickhouse, who reviewed the NTSB’s public docket of the crash.
The helicopter did, however, lack two notable components. It did not have a flight recorder, colloquially known as a “black box,” that could have provided additional data for investigators. Nor did it have a terrain awareness and warning system, known as TAWS, which notifies pilots when they get dangerously close to the ground.
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