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The helicopter pilot who crashed into a hill in Calabasas, Calif., In January 2020 – committing suicide, Kobe Bryant and seven other passengers – allegedly made preventable mistakes that resulted in the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday released a summary of its findings of a year-long crash report, concluding that pilot Ara Zobayan violated his training and several safety protocols when he flew into a wall of cloud. NTSB investigators discovered that Zobayan had become spatially disoriented indoors, causing him to lean left to a decreasing altitude as he thought he was climbing above the clouds.
The NTSB noted that Zobayan’s “wrong decision” to fly the Sikorsky S-76B helicopter in the clouds was likely “influenced by its self-induced pressure to meet the customer’s travel needs.” Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven other passengers were on their way to a women’s basketball tournament at Mamba Sports Academy in Newbury Park, California.
“Unfortunately, we continue to see these same issues influencing poor decision-making among pilots otherwise experienced in aircraft accidents,” says Robert Sumwalt, president of the NTSB. “If this pilot had not succumbed to the pressure he exerted to continue the flight in adverse weather conditions, it is likely that this accident would not have happened. A robust safety management system can help operators like Island Express provide the support their pilots need to help them withstand such very real pressures.
Here’s an excerpt from the NTSB report, edited for length and clarity:
“At 9:44:34 (approximately two minutes before the accident) … the pilot announced to an air traffic control center that he was starting a climb to bring the helicopter ‘overhead’. (cloudy) layers ”and the helicopter immediately began to climb at a speed of approximately 1,500 feet per minute. At about the same time, the helicopter entered a gradual left turn. … About 36 seconds later and while climbing, the helicopter began to veer more closely to the left. …
The helicopter reached an altitude of approximately 2370 feet at mean sea level … at 0945:15, then began to descend rapidly in a left turn toward the ground. At 0945: 17 (as the helicopter descended), the air traffic controller asked the pilot to “state his intentions” and the pilot responded that the flight was climbing to 4000ft msl. A witness near the accident site first heard the helicopter then saw it emerge from the bottom of the cloud layer in a descent to the left bank about 1 or 2 seconds before impact. “
The office noted that Zobayan did not provide an alternative flight plan in his theft risk analysis form, completed about two hours before the helicopter left. He also revealed that he was not unqualified to fly and that he was not impaired due to a health problem, alcohol, other drugs or fatigue; he also found that there was no helicopter malfunction or breakdown, or pressure from Bryant or Island Express Helicopters Inc. – the charter broker – to complete the flight.
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