NTSB: Pilot's decision making led to crash that killed Kobe Bryant and seven others
After a year-long investigation into the crash took the life of Kobe Bryant and eight others, the National Transportation Bureau has released its conclusion. Yahoo Sports takes an in-depth look at what they found.
Video transcript
ROBERT SUMWALT: Thank you for joining us, and welcome to this virtual board meeting of the National Transportation Safety Board. Today, we meet in open session, as required by the government in the Sunshine Act, to consider the rapid descent into terrain of a chartered Sikorsky S-76B helicopter in Calabasas, California on the morning of January the 26th of last year.
- On January 26, 2020, a date forever burned into our minds, a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant crashed into a hillside. The very next day, investigators set out to determine why. For months, they gathered evidence. On Tuesday, they met to establish probable cause, and they concluded that a pilot's decisions were primarily responsible for the tragedy. That's the short version.
But their investigation revealed so much more. Yahoo Sports reviewed thousands of pages of documents from the past year, air traffic control logs, interview transcripts, previously unseen videos, and more. Together, they tell a comprehensive story of what went wrong.
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To Kobe Bryant, Ara Zobayan was "Mr. Pilot Man," the preferred captain every time Kobe took flight, and their itinerary on January 26, 2020 was familiar. Zobayan would fly Kobe and his daughter Gianna 90 miles to a youth basketball tournament at the Mamba Sports Academy. With them were Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester, Gianna's teammates, Keri Altobelli, John Altobelli, and Sarah Chester, their parents, and Christina Mauser, an assistant coach. That morning, Zobayan cleared them for takeoff, including with a text that stated the weather was looking OK.
So at 9:07, they rose into the air. The first half of the flight was uneventful. Helicopter N72EX glided over flat land and through an overcast sky. At 9:20, it passed Dodger Stadium, and Zobayan radioed in to Burbank air traffic control.
N72EX: Burbank helicopter seven two echo x-ray Sikorsky helicopter approaching the zoo for the one o one westbound transition at eight hundred.
BUR-LC: November two echo x-ray, hold outside Burbank class charlie airspace. I have an aircraft going around.
N72EX: Two echo x-ray holding.
- They circled over Glendale, just east of the Los Angeles Zoo, waiting not for weather, but for air traffic to clear. Five minutes became seven, then 10.
BUR-LC: November two echo x-ray, it's gonna be a little bit.
N72EX: OK. We'll continue holding, two echo x-ray.
- When clearance finally arrived, Zobayan followed I-5 northbound to Highway 118. He looped around Van Nuys Airport, and back down to Highway 101. At 9:40, he told air traffic control he was in VFR conditions, or visual flight conditions, meaning his eyes, as opposed to instruments, were guiding him. The helicopter cruised at an altitude of 1,500 feet, a couple hundred feet below the clouds, and around 500 above the earth. But around 9:42, terrain began to rise. At 9:44 and roughly 17 seconds, the aircraft was only 300 feet above the ground.
Fog in the area was dense. Around 15 seconds later, Zobayan told air traffic control, "We're gonna go ahead and start our climb to go above the layers." And they did climb, from 1,400 feet to 1,600, 1,800, 2,000. But they also banked left off the 101 freeway, over Calabasas Hills. They neared 2,400 feet. Zobayan told air traffic control they were climbing to 4,000, but then they stopped climbing, started descending, barreling toward a hillside.
SOCAL AIR TRAFFIC APPROACH CONTROL CENTER: Two echo x-ray, you're still too low-level for flight following at this time. Two echo x-ray, SoCal.
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- So what went wrong, and why? Who's to blame? A main focus of the NTSB investigation was weather, and Zobayan's navigation of it. Early on the morning of the crash, local forecasts warned of dense fog and low clouds lingering over coastal mountains. Footage from a camera near the accident site shows a valley almost completely obscured by haze. The Los Angeles Police Department had grounded its choppers. So why did Zobayan fly his?
Investigators probed whether Bryant's stature might have impacted the decision, but Zobayan's longtime girlfriend said the pilot would not be pressured into flying. Records provided by Island Express, the helicopter company that employed Zobayan, show previous weather cancellations for high-profile clients, including Bryant, Kawhi Leonard, and Kylie Jenner. Patti Taylor, who helped manage Bryant's flights, told investigators that, "Make no mistake, he didn't like being told no, but we told him no."
It's unclear whether Zobayan considered calling off the flight. In a lawsuit filed last February, attorneys for Vanessa Bryant argued that he should have, that he "failed to properly monitor and assess the weather prior to takeoff," and "failed to obtain proper weather data prior to the flight." Some aviation experts, in retrospect, agree. Others describe it as a judgment call. Here's former NTSB investigator Jeff Guzzetti.
JEFF GUZZETTI: I don't think it's such an egregious decision the pilot made to begin the flight. He had a helicopter. He had a hell of a lot of experience. He was qualified for VFR. He had flown this route before. And it was legal. So I don't know how-- I'm not that critical on the initial decision to take off."
- Zobayan did alter his route. On Saturday, and many sunny days before, he flew in more direct to Camarillo. On Sunday, he decided the safest route was east and north, up and around mountains and coastal fog. But even that route posed problems. Zobayan had clearance to fly special VFR, meaning he could venture into marginal conditions, as long as he could navigate with his eyes on the earth below. As he neared Burbank, an air traffic controller alerted him that IFR, instrument conditions, lay ahead.
BURBANK AIR TOWER: Seven two echo x-ray, Burbank class charlie surface area is IFR.
Van Nuys is also IFR.
- Zobayan was an IFR-rated pilot, but his company's certifications didn't permit instrument flights. So it's here, mid-flight, where experts see fault. Here's Robert Ditchey, an aviation consultant, on what Zobayan should have done.
ROBERT DITCHEY: He should have landed at Van Nuys, period.
- Vanessa's attorneys also argue that Zobayan "failed to abort the flight when he knew of the cloudy conditions." Instead, he flew into them. At around 9:40, he cut south toward the 101, and entered a pass through foothills. Cameras atop some of those hills offer a sense of what awaited. A local pastor says it was so foggy that catching a punt would have been near impossible, and a local cyclist told investigators that he'd canceled his ride that morning because he feared drivers wouldn't be able to see him.
Zobayan, per visual flight rules, had to stay below that cloud layer. Experts say a couple things could explain his decision to try to climb above it. Either he felt his space narrowing between rising ground and the cloud ceiling, or fog had worsened and obscured his view of his surroundings. Bursting through the clouds was his escape. Perhaps, an air traffic controller speculated, there was a break in the clouds. But if not, Zobayan either flew blindly into them, or he attempted a rapid switch to instrument guided flight, and that, as former Naval pilot Chris Harmer explains, isn't easy.
CHRIS HARMER: Very difficult to go from an external visual scan to an internal instrument scan. You can do it... But the transition from flying with external reference to flying on your instruments can be very disorienting.
- Spatial disorientation is one theory investigators have for why the climb went awry. When enveloped by clouds, pilots explain, they can lose their capacity to discern what's up and what's down, what's left and what's right. There's also a claim, made by Island Express in a legal filing, that two air traffic controllers contributed to Zobayan's confusion. At 9:43, one relieved the other. At 9:44, when Zobayan informed them that he was climbing, he likely expected to connect with the controller he'd spoken to four minutes earlier. Instead, the new controller asked him to identify.
SOCAL AIR TRAFFIC APPROACH CONTROL CENTER: Echo x-ray, ident?
- Zobayan responded. But 20 seconds later, the controller asked him again.
SOCAL AIR TRAFFIC APPROACH CONTROL CENTER: Two echo x-ray, where, say intentions.
- At this point, the helicopter was still climbing. Radar data and reports of cloud tops at 2,400 feet indicate it was almost in the clear. But it was also turning. At some point, experts say, disorientation set in. The climb became a flat turn, then a plunge, from 2,300 feet to 1,300 feet, in 15 seconds, out of the clouds and into the hillside. We'll never know precisely what happened in those final moments. But to experts, some degree of pilot error is clear. The NTSB confirmed that on Tuesday.
BRIAN CURTIS: The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilot's decision to continue flight under visual flight rules into instrument meteorological conditions which resulted in the pilot's spatial disorientation and loss of control.