In other words, Zobayan might have felt like the helicopter was climbing as it banked toward the hillside. One NTSB document mentions the possibility that he might have experienced a "somatogravic illusion," a phenomenon in which gravitational forces can confuse the body in the absence of visual cues. Investigators have questioned whether Zobayan became spatially disoriented in the fog just before the crash. He was counseled on the incident but not required to undergo any remedial training.
Zobayan was reprimanded once by the FAA, in 2015, for flying into busy airspace without clearance. "He's always been a great pilot, performed really well, very proficient," Luca Dell'Anese, an instructor who oversaw Zobayan's training checks for several years, told the NTSB. The hillside where a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others crashed. Investigators even compared footage from cameras in the area, perched behind home plate at three youth baseball fields, to estimate visibility at the time of the crash. Its meteorological report spans 394 pages and includes satellite images, surface observations, photos, maps and other assorted data. The weather on the morning of the crash has become a key component of the NTSB's investigation. "We heard the helicopter flying normally, but couldn't really see it because it was extremely foggy and low clouds," a third witness reported in an email. "I was thinking to myself of (sic) why a helicopter would be flying so low in very bad weather conditions." One witness told the NTSB that she was preparing to meet a friend for a hike at a nearby trailhead when she saw a helicopter disappear into clouds that were obscuring the tops of trees.Īnother witness reached out to the investigators to advise them that the area near the crash is "predisposed to channel fog up from the coast." Nor did it have a terrain awareness and warning system, known as TAWS, which notifies pilots when they get dangerously close to the ground.
It did not have a flight recorder, colloquially known as a "black box," that could have provided additional data for investigators. The helicopter did, however, lack two notable components. "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. 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." The NTSB has examined the helicopter itself as part of its investigation, including both maintenance records and physical evidence obtained at the crash scene. "They just don't fall out of the sky," pilot Kurt Deetz, who previously flew Bryant in the same helicopter, told CNN last year. 26, 2020, killing Kobe Bryant and other others. And the helicopter was heading into increasingly mountainous terrain, where visibility that morning was poor.Ī Sikorsky S-76B helicopter is shown, the same model that crashed Jan. Minutes later, there was a shift change at the Southern California TRACON, which provides air traffic control services to airports in the region. "You just going to stay down low at that for all the way to Camarillo?" an air traffic controller asked Zobayan. Then it followed a highway into the hills near Calabasas, flying between 400 feet and 600 feet above the ground. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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