The text messages followed Kobe Bryant’s helicopter on a quiet Sunday morning five months ago.
Wheels, the runner who organized the flight sent a message when the Sikorsky S-76B left John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana at 9:06 am
Veteran driver Ara Zobayan would transport Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and six others on their way to basketball games at the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks. Zobayan was Bryant’s favorite pilot. The retired Lakers star called him “Mr. Pilot Man.”
“I just started raining lightly here,” one of Bryant’s drivers said from Camarillo airport, the helicopter’s destination, at 9:33 am
The same group had flown without incident to the same destination a day earlier, and Zobayan flew Bryant on the road at least 10 times last year.
A text message between the broker, the charter company and the drivers accompanied each flight. The smallest details mattered, such as reminding drivers that Bryant’s backpack was hidden in the back of the blue and white helicopter.
“Land?” Another broker employee texted at 9:48 a.m., three minutes after the flight had been scheduled to arrive.
“Not yet,” replied the driver a minute later.
Thirteen minutes of silence on the line masked the growing alarm.
“Ara, you’re fine,” he sent her the message at 10:02 am
The pilot did not respond.
The text messages are among more than 1,700 pages of interview transcripts, emails, studies, and images released by the National Transportation Safety Board last month documenting the flight that crashed into a fog-covered hillside in Calabasas on January 26, killing all nine people. on board. An earlier NTSB report found no mechanical or engine failure.
The new batch of records does not draw any conclusions about the accident. But they provide a minute-by-minute account of Zobayan’s girlfriend Bryant’s last flight, mechanics who worked on the S-76B, air traffic controllers, pilots, charter company employees and broker, a personal assistant to the family, and eyewitnesses to the crash.
The night before, Patti Taylor of OC Helicopters, the broker who organized Bryant’s flights and ground transportation, reviewed the plan.
“Does the weather look good tomorrow?” she texted the group.
“I just checked and it’s not the best day tomorrow, but it’s not as bad as today,” replied Zobayan.
The game had been moved from 9:45 am to 9 am so Bryant could see another team play. They would return around 3 pm
“Advised weather could be a problem …” added Taylor.
“Copy,” said Zobayan. “He will advise on the weather early in the morning.”
Tess Davidson, Zobayan’s girlfriend of seven years, told investigators that she checked the weather through an app on her iPad called ForeFlight the night before each flight and did not hesitate to cancel a charter if the conditions were not correct.
“I would not be pressured to fly,” he said.
Island Express canceled 150 flights due to weather last year, according to investigators. Some of them involved high-profile clients like Kylie Jenner and Clippers star Kawhi Leonard. In the two days leading up to the accident, the weather forced the cancellation of 13 flights. Bryant was also not immune to weather-related scheduling issues.
“There were often times when we might have to fly [Bryant] one way, but he couldn’t return it because of the weather that came in or he had to cancel or delay it, “Taylor, the broker, told investigators.” Now, make no mistake, he didn’t like being told no, but we told him not”.
Echoed of Zobayan’s girlfriend: “Ara could never be pressured to fly if it wasn’t right.”
Kurt Deetz, a former Island Express pilot who had flown Bryant, told investigators that Bryant left the pilot’s weather problems because he “assumed you were doing your job.”
Bryant had an unusual level of comfort with Zobayan. In interviews with investigators, colleagues described the Island Express lead pilot as personable, detail-oriented, and thoughtful enough to buy a new drill for one of the company’s mechanics as a surprise and diapers for another employee’s son. . He woke up around 6 a.m. every day without the help of an alarm clock, rarely drank alcohol, and had more than 8,500 hours of flight time. Although other pilots had been cleared to fly with the Bryant family, they wanted Zobayan.
The pilot delighted colleagues with stories of flying Bryant through southern California. Lorenzo Lamas, an Island Express pilot, recalled that Zobayan told him about the Bryant family’s transportation to the San Bernardino International Airport on Thanksgiving. To Zobayan’s surprise, Bryant returned to the helicopter a few minutes after landing. She had forgotten about the filling. Zobayan drove him back to John Wayne Airport to pick up the garrison.
Whitney Bagge, vice president of Island Express, told investigators that the relationship between Zobayan and Bryant became a friendship. Taylor said that Bryant trusted Zobayan “with her girls and her family, which was paramount to her” and that the interactions between the pilot and the client were “very warm, friendly and playful.”
Bryant’s widow Vanessa sued Island Express and Zobayan’s property in the Los Angeles County Superior Court in February, alleging that the company “allowed a flight with full knowledge that the subject helicopter was flying in unsafe weather conditions.” . Surviving members of the other three families who lost members in the accident have also filed lawsuits. A company attorney has called the accident a “tragic accident.”
At 7:30 a.m. on January 26, Zobayan texted the group saying the weather was “fine.” Taylor tracked the weather 50 minutes later. Zobayan replied, “It should be fine.” Ric Webb, the owner of Helicopteros OC, chimed in: “I agree.”
Zobayan flew the S-76B from Long Beach to John Wayne Airport, landed at 8:39 a.m., then reviewed the next flight with Webb in the ForeFlight app.
After taking off in Orange County, the helicopter flew northwest and then crashed shortly before 10 a.m. near Las Virgenes Road, south of Highway 101, in Calabasas.
“He ran his finger saying he was going to go east and north of the clouds,” Webb told investigators. “At no time did he imply or demonstrate that he was going to be in the clouds.”
The NTSB’s operational factors and human performance report read: “The evidence that the accident pilot received meteorological information from an approved source could not be determined.”
The eight passengers arrived at the Atlantic Aviation ramp: Bryant and Gianna; John Altobelli, wife Keri and daughter Alyssa; Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton; and Christina Mauser. Gianna, Alyssa, and Payton were teammates. Christina was an assistant coach.
The helicopter followed Highway 5 to Los Angeles, circled Glendale for 12 minutes, and then flew onto Highway 101 toward Thousand Oaks.
At 9:44 am, Zobayan told the air traffic controller that he was west of Van Nuys and was planning to climb above the cloud layer.
“Uh, we’re going up to 4,000,” he said a minute later.
“And then what are you going to do when you get to the altitude,” asked the controller.
There was no answer. The controller asked several more times. No response.
The helicopter crashed into a hillside amid dense fog near Las Virgenes Road and Willow Glen Street at 9:45 am
A witness emailed the NTSB that “there was zero visibility beyond the point where I saw him disappear into the low cloud at the beginning of the trail” and she “found peculiar that they flew straight into the heavy clouds so close to the hills … “
Another witness emailed the agency: “We heard that the helicopter was flying normally, but I really couldn’t see it because it was extremely cloudy and with low clouds. I was thinking to myself why a helicopter would fly so low in very bad weather conditions. Then all of a sudden we hear a big BOOM. “
The NTSB aircraft performance study said the helicopter leaned to the left and away from 101 while communicating with the controller. When Zobayan said that the helicopter was going up, it was actually going down. According to the study, the pilot “may have misperceived pitch and roll angles.”
“When a pilot misperceives altitude and acceleration, it is known as the ‘somatogravic illusion’ and can cause spatial disorientation,” the report says. In other words, acceleration can make a driver feel like their vehicle is climbing when it is not.
At 9:49 am, Taylor, the broker, asked Bagge, the vice president of Island Express, to verify the location of the helicopter. His tracking had stopped at 9:45 a.m. on Spidertracks, the app the company used to track his plane.
“Patti was extremely concerned,” Webb told investigators. “The drivers say, ‘Is the helicopter there? Where’s the helicopter?
Zobayan generally sent a text message “landed” to the group when the helicopter arrived, followed by a driver who sent messages to “passengers on board” and another text message when they reached the final destination.
The company tried to call Zobayan on the radio and his phone. Unanswered.
Bagge took a screenshot of the flight flying over Glendale. She thought that was why it was late.
“It appears they either stopped him in airspace or Kobe wanted to see something there, which was not unusual,” he told investigators.
Bagge kept updating the tracker. It has not changed. He prayed that the tracker had broken, but told Angel Perez, the company’s ground operations manager, to withdraw his emergency response manual.
“Angel tried to call Ara and [director of operations] Loft [Dalton] sometimes unsuccessfully and they both went to voicemail, I responded immediately: ‘Go to the Emergency Response Manual now,’ ”Bagge wrote in an account provided to the NTSB.
Camarillo airport had not seen the helicopter.
They reached Dalton, who drove towards Calabasas.
Around 10 a.m., Zobayan’s girlfriend woke up and continued her morning routine of texting him. The message did not pass.
At 10:22 am, following one of the procedures in the manual, a different Island Express helicopter was ordered from the last known location of the missing plane. But five minutes later, the helicopter was told to turn around.
An accident was confirmed in the same area where the tracker was stopped.
