SAD NEWS: A LAKERS player passed away a few hours ago.
In honour of the first anniversary of the helicopter accident that claimed the lives of Kobe Bryant and eight other people, USA TODAY Sports is reliving the Lakers legend’s life through a six-day series of articles, images, and videos.
Initially, horror spread around the world when the chopper crashed into a California hillside early on January 26, 2020, killing Kobe Bryant and the other eight occupants.
Next, the question was: How?
How did this apparently ordinary outing to a kid’s basketball game become tragic? How did Bryant’s years-long usage of a helicopter end in a crash?
How on earth could this have occurred?
Firefighters respond to a helicopter accident site in Calabasas, California, which claimed the lives of eight people, including Kobe Bryant.
Firefighters respond to a helicopter accident site in Calabasas, California, which claimed the lives of eight people, including Kobe Bryant.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Mark J. Terrell
The details of the disaster, including the weather, the pilot’s expertise, and the safety measures of the helicopter, are known over a year later. Moreover, it will soon be clear in a few weeks what caused the disaster.
On February 9, the National Transportation Safety Board will publish its final report on the event, which will include a suggestion for safety measures as well as the proximate cause.
Meanwhile, the board has made public 1,852 pages of factual data gathered throughout its inquiry, including video footage from nearby cameras, photographs, emails, text messages, transcripts of interviews, and reports on local meteorological conditions.
Brickhouse, Anthony
“Accident investigation is really like putting a puzzle back together.”
Anthony Brickhouse, an associate professor of aircraft safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a former NTSB investigator, described accident inquiry as “really like putting a puzzle back together.”
“It’s an extremely careful procedure. It takes time for things to happen. It needs further investigation and study.”
Here is what we currently know about the crash based on NTSB papers, while investigators work to refine their final report.
The journey
Pilot Ara Zobayan texted the small group of persons organising Bryant’s vacation, which included his drivers, a concierge, and a helicopter business official, at 8:39 on the morning of the incident.
“Heli at OC,” wrote Zobayan. “Standing by.”
After thirty minutes, the chopper took off from the John Wayne-Orange County Airport and flew to Camarillo, California. From there, the passengers were to be taken to a nearby Thousand Oaks youth basketball tournament. Gianna, Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, John and Keri Altobelli and their daughter Alyssa, Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton, and assistant coach Christina Mauser all boarded the aircraft with Bryant.
After roughly fifteen minutes of flying north, the chopper decelerated and circled about Glendale to give way to aircraft at a nearby airport. Then, it flew between 400 and 600 feet above the earth as it followed a roadway into the hills close to Calabasas, California.
An air traffic controller asked Zobayan, “You just going to stay down low at that for all the way to Camarillo?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the pilot. “Low altitude.”
A few minutes later, there was a shift change at Southern California TRACON, which serves the area’s airports with air traffic control. Furthermore, the chopper was flying into progressively more steep terrain with little visibility that morning.
Zobayan, the pilot, told the new air traffic controller that he was ascending to 4,000 feet above the clouds. Rather, the helicopter only reached an altitude of 1,600 feet before making a sharp left turn and plummeting downhill, slamming into the hills.
“That combination of the relatively high-rising terrain and the low-lying stratus layer is really a deadly combination,” stated Jack Cress, an instructor in the University of Southern California’s Aviation Safety & Security Programme and a former U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot.
The chopper
During and after his NBA career, Bryant frequently travelled by helicopter, partly to escape the frequently congested traffic in Los Angeles. Additionally, he frequently hired Island Express Helicopters for chartered flights; in 2019, he made 13 excursions.
Actually, the Sikorsky S-76B helicopter that was involved in the collision was the same one that brought Kobe Bryant to his last Los Angeles Lakers game in 2016.
According to Cress, the Sikorsky S-76 has a solid safety record after decades of service and is generally well-regarded among pilots. He mentioned that since 2009, it has been the “helicopter of choice” for prominent dignitaries including Queen Elizabeth II.
Shown is a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, the same type that killed Kobe Bryant and several other people when it crashed on January 26, 2020.
Shown is a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, the same type that killed Kobe Bryant and several other people when it crashed on January 26, 2020.
AP MATT HARTMAN
According to pilot Kurt Deetz, who flew Bryant in the same chopper before, “they just don’t fall out of the sky,” CNN reported last year.
As part of its inquiry, the NTSB has inspected the helicopter itself, examining maintenance records as well as tangible evidence gathered from the accident site. In an early report from the previous year, it said that the engines were discovered close to the debris and that there was “no evidence of an uncontained or catastrophic internal failure.”
After reviewing the NTSB’s public docket of the incident, Brickhouse stated, “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.”
Still, the helicopter was missing two important parts. It lacked a flight recorder, sometimes referred to as a “black box,” which would have given investigators access to more information. It also lacked the Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS), which alerts pilots when they approach too closely to the ground.
One witness reported to the NTSB that she observed a helicopter vanish into clouds that obscured the tops of trees as she was getting ready to go hiking with a buddy at a nearby trailhead.
The investigators received a tip from a different witness that the crash site is “predisposed to channel fog up from the coast.”
A third witness wrote in an email, “We heard the helicopter flying normally, but couldn’t really see it because of the extreme fog and low clouds.” “I was thinking to myself of (sic) why a helicopter would be flying so low in very bad weather conditions.”
The NTSB’s inquiry now heavily relies on the meteorological conditions on the morning of the incident. Its 394-page meteorological report contains various data such as satellite photographs, surface observations, photos, maps, and other types of information.
Even the cameras at three child baseball fields, situated behind home plate, provided film that investigators examined to determine visibility levels at the scene of the incident.
“That combination of the low-lying stratus layer, and also the relatively high-rising terrain – (it’s) a common and, really, a deadly combination”
Before the plane took off, Bryant’s travel coordinators also discussed the weather. The pilot, Zobayan, responded to text messages regarding it the night before and the morning of the trip.
Should be alright, he answered.
Pilots usually operate under one of two flight rules: visual (they can see where they’re going) or instrument (they are unable to see well enough to rely only on the instruments of the aircraft). However, Zobayan had to take off under special visual flying regulations that morning due to the weather, which was a compromise between the two.
Cress said, “That term is not scary in and of itself.” “But when you’re having to contend with low visibility, and low clouds, and variable terrain – and that’s quite variable up there – then special VFR does get scary.”
In Calabasas, California, supporters assemble close to the slope where Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed.
In Calabasas, California, supporters assemble close to the slope where Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed.
Jacqueline Kamin-Ononcea of USA TODAY Sports
In addition, Bryant’s wife Vanessa and the relatives of the other victims have filed many lawsuits against the helicopter firm and Zobayan’s estate, citing the weather that morning as a major factor. The families contend that Island Express Helicopters ought to have had policies in place to prohibit Zobayan from flying in hazardous weather and that he shouldn’t have done so.
On the morning of the disaster, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department claimed that heavy clouds and fog in the vicinity had forced them to stop their own helicopters.
The pilot
The 50-year-old pilot’s fiancée of seven years told police that he originally developed an interest in aviation after moving from Lebanon in the 1980s. At the time of the disaster, he had flown more than 8,500 hours, including 1,250 in the Sikorsky S-76. He obtained his private pilot certificate in 2001.
According to Deetz, the second pilot, Zobayan was one of only two pilots that flew Bryant for Island Express Helicopters for a number of years.
the slope where Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven other people were riding in a helicopter when it crashed.
the slope where Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven other people were riding in a helicopter when it crashed.
HANASHIRO, ROBERT, USA TODAY
An instructor who spent several years supervising Zobayan’s training checks, Luca Dell’Anese, told the NTSB, “He’s always been a great pilot, performed really well, very proficient.” “He always demonstrated sound judgement … during the training.”
In 2015, Zobayan received one reprimand from the FAA for flying into crowded airspace without authorization. He didn’t have to go through any corrective training; instead, he received counselling about the incident.
If Zobayan lost his sense of spatial orientation in the fog just before the disaster, it is a topic that investigators have raised. He may have suffered from a “somatogravic illusion,” a condition in which gravity forces can cause the body to get confused in the absence of visual clues, according to one NTSB paper.
Stated differently, Zobayan may have thought that the chopper was ascending as it veered towards the mountainside.
“Your body may be deceiving you, which could put you in a difficult situation,” said Cress, who holds the position of senior officer at Vortechs Helicopter Analytics. “It doesn’t know that you’re both turned and attempting to climb.”
Cress also questions if Zobayan was under any pressure to finish the mission on schedule that day. If so, what could have prevented him from turning around and continuing to fly into the fog and into steep terrain?
He would have felt a great deal of pressure from his colleagues to prove to them that “I can handle this; I’ve done this type of thing before; I know this territory. “I’m going to do everything I can, and this guy in the back really wants to do it,” Cress said. “He just got in too deep.”
The subsequent actions
The subsequent actions
Although the NTSB’s analysis of the crash’s cause is not admissible in court, the conclusions it released on February 9 will probably serve as a guide for attorneys representing the relatives of the dead in their wrongful death claims.
The NTSB will also have the chance to offer safety recommendations in the final report to the FAA, which will have the final say over whether or not to implement them.
According to aviation litigation specialist Robert Clifford, tragedies frequently occur before significant safety changes are given proper consideration.
In Los Angeles, a woman passes by a painting featuring Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna Bryant.
USA TODAY, HARRISON HILL
“A person of the stature of Mrs. Bryant, advancing the cause of enhanced safety for her husband and daughter,” said Clifford, “maybe she can make change.”
In the meanwhile, Brickhouse pointed out that the NTSB has been unsuccessfully attempting to convince the FAA to implement some of the same safety recommendations “for the past 15, 16 years”. For example, the board originally suggested requiring TAWS on helicopters in 2006 following a helicopter disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that claimed ten lives. The FAA declined to use it.
“Because (this) was a high-profile accident,” Brickhouse stated, “it’ll be interesting to see if some of those recommendations will be enacted.”
Associated Press contributed
Reach Tom Schad on Twitter @Tom_Schad or tschad@usatoday.com.
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