The pilot of the helicopter that crashed near Los
Angeles, killing nine people on board including
NBA great Kobe Bryant, told air traffic controllers in
his last radio message that he was climbing to avoid
a cloud layer before plunging more than 1,000 feet
(305 meters) into a hillside, an accident investigator said. Radar indicated the helicopter reached a height of
2,300 feet (701 meters) on Sunday morning before
descending, and the wreckage was found at 1,085
feet (331 meters), Jennifer Homendy of the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said. NTSB investigators went to the crash site in
Calabasas on Monday to collect evidence.
"The debris field is pretty extensive," Homendy
said. "A piece of the tail is down the hill. The
fuselage is on the other side of that hill. And then
the main rotor is about 100 yards (91 meters)
beyond that." Some experts suggested that the pilot might have
gotten disoriented because of fog, but Homendy
said investigating teams would look at everything
from the pilot's history to the engines.
"We look at man, machine and the environment,
and weather is just a small portion of that," she
said. "The pilot had asked for and received special
clearance to fly in heavy fog just minutes before the
crash and was flying at 1,400 feet (427 meters)
when he went south and then west. "The pilot then asked for air traffic controllers to
provide flight following radar assistance but was
told the craft was too low for that assistance. "About four minutes later, the pilot advised they
were climbing to avoid a cloud layer. When air
traffic controllers asked what the pilot planned to
do, there was no reply. Radar data indicates the
helicopter climbed to 2,300 feet (701 meters) and
then began a left descending turn. Last radar contact was around 9:45 a.m." Two minutes later, someone on the ground called
911 to report the crash.
Some experts raised questions of whether the
helicopter should have even been flying. The
weather was so foggy that the Los Angeles Police
Department and the county sheriff's department
had grounded their own choppers. The Sikorsky S-76 killed the retired athlete along
with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and
everyone else aboard, scattering debris over an
area the size of a football field. Crews recovered three bodies on Sunday and
resumed the effort on Monday amid an outpouring
of grief and shock around the world over the loss
of the basketball great who helped lead the Los
Angeles Lakers to five NBA titles during his dazzling
20-year career. The pilot was identified as Ara Zobayan. He was the
chief pilot for Island Express Helicopters, the
aircraft's owner, the company said in a statement. "Ara has been with the company for over 10 years
and has over 8,000 flight hours," the company
said, adding that it was working closely with the
NTSB to investigate the crash.
"Zobayan was commercially certified as a pilot and
certified as a flight instructor," Homendy said. Several aviation experts said it is not uncommon for
helicopter pilots to be given such permission,
though some thought it unusual that it would be
granted in airspace as busy as that over Los
Angeles. But Kurt Deetz, who flew for Bryant dozens of times
in the same chopper that went down, said
permission is often granted in the area. "It happened all the time in the winter months in LA
- you get fog," Deetz said.
The helicopter left Santa Ana in Orange County,
south of Los Angeles, shortly after 9am, heading
north and then west. Bryant was believed to be
headed for his youth sports academy in nearby
Thousand Oaks, which was holding a basketball
tournament on Sunday in which Bryant's daughter, known as Gigi, was competing. Air traffic controllers noted poor visibility around
Burbank to the north and Van Nuys to the
northwest. At one point, the controllers instructed
the chopper to circle because of other planes in the
area before proceeding.
The aircraft crashed about 30 miles (48 kilometers)
northwest of downtown Los Angeles. When it
struck the ground, it was flying at about 184 mph
(296 kph) and descending at a rate of more than
4,000 feet per minute, according to data from
Flightradar24. Bryant had been known since his playing days for
taking helicopters instead of braving the
notoriously snarled Los Angeles traffic. "I'm not
going into LA without the Mamba chopper," he
joked on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2018, referring to
his own nickname, Black Mamba.
On Sunday, firefighters hiked in with medical
equipment and hoses, and medical personnel
rappelled to the site from a helicopter. About 20
investigators were on the site early on Monday. The
Los Angeles County medical examiner, Dr. Jonathan
Lucas, said it could take at least a couple of days to recover the remains. Among those killed in the crash were John
Altobelli, 56, longtime head coach of Southern
California's Orange Coast College baseball team; his
wife, Keri; and daughter, Alyssa, who played on the
same basketball team as Bryant's daughter; and
Christina Mauser, a girls' basketball coach at a Southern California elementary school.