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Image source, Reuters
Kobe Bryant with his daughter Gianna. They both died in the accident last year.
The last minute brought an unusual silence from the other side.
The control tower tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the N72EX helicopter, which was carrying Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter and seven other people more than a year ago in California, but had no response.
“N72EX what are your intentions?” Asked the controller, followed by silence. “N72EX, they are still at a very low altitude to be able to follow the flight …”, he continued.
Seconds later, the Sikorsky S-76B crashed in a difficult-to-reach area near the Californian city of Calabasas: there were no survivors.
Since it was known that the NBA star was on the flight, the shock of the news went around the world.
The authorities immediately began the investigation to determine the causes of the accident and this Tuesday, more than a year later, they offered the first official conclusions that reveal that those final minutes were decisive in the tragedy.
According to the report, the helicopter pilot apparently got disoriented in the middle of the fog.
Once disoriented, the pilot apparently did not use the aircraft’s instruments, did not understand them or did not trust them, to the point that he believed he was emerging from a dense cloud when he was actually descending, authorities said.
“This maneuver is consistent with the pilot experiencing spatial disorientation in conditions of limited visibility,” said Robert Sumwalt, president of the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Many helicopters like the one Bryant was traveling do not have “black boxes”, unlike airplanes, so it is often very difficult to identify the causes of an accident.
Behind the causes
In exposing the possible causes of the accident, the NTSB was critical of pilot Ara Zobayan, who, according to the report, violated federal rules and went against his own flight training by entering thick clouds.
The pilot “was flying under visual or VFR flight orders that legally prohibited him from penetrating the clouds,” but he did it anyway, Sumwalt said.
Investigators also questioned Zobayan’s decision to tilt the helicopter to the left, rather than fly it upward as he tried to escape bad weather.
Zobayan was an experienced pilot and had logged more than 1,200 hours in the Sikorsky-76 helicopter.
According to authorities, disorientation can appear when pilots cannot see the sky or landscape, making it difficult to judge altitude and acceleration.
Image source, Reuters / Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
The accident caused an international commotion.
The report also indicates that Bryant’s relationship with the pilot may have influenced the wrong decisions he made that day when steering the ship.
Sumwalt indicated that therefore the NTSB will also investigate “if the pilot faced pressure to complete the flight.”
“What were the expectations of the pilot under company policy? Did he pressure himself? What actions could he have taken to avoid flying into the clouds?”
The doubts
In text messages on the eve of the accident and published now by the NTSB, Zobayan wrote that the prognosis appeared “not to be the best.”
The next morning, he wrote that conditions “looked good.”
Despite poor weather conditions, investigators did not conclude that Zobayan was wrong to proceed with the flight.
Instead, they reiterated that the most possible causes of the accident were in decisions he made in the air.
Sumwalt said they concluded that the pressure Zobayan exerted on himself to complete the flight would have increased as he got closer to the destination.
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NTSB Board Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg indicated that similar pressure may have been behind other plane crashes involving celebrities such as Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson.
“In all of those cases, this is someone who had star status and the drivers desperately want to do a good job for the customer,” he said.
The NTSB had previously claimed that there was no evidence of mechanical failure on the Sikorsky S-76B helicopter.
Bryant regularly traveled by helicopter to avoid the notorious traffic in the city of Los Angeles and on the morning of January 26, 2020 he was taking his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and her friends and family to a youth basketball tournament.
Bryant’s wife, Vanessa Bryant, sued Zobayan and the companies that owned and operated the helicopter for alleged negligence and wrongful death.
The families of the other victims sued the helicopter companies, but not Zobayan.
Vanessa Bryant also sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after officers shared unauthorized photos of the crash site.
California now has a state law that prohibits first responders from taking unauthorized photographs of people who died at the scene of an accident or crime.
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