The night prior to Kobe Bryant’s tragic helicopter flight, pilot Ara Zobayan was warned about weather potentially being a factor.
The broker which arranged the trip expressed concern stating “weather could be an issue.” Zobayan responded the following morning “should be OK,” according to text messages released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Here are the details from the Los Angeles Times.
The text messages are among the findings in 1,700 pages of documents that federal regulators released Wednesday. The records draw no conclusions about the cause of the crash, but they offer the most comprehensive account to date of Bryant’s final flight, which took off from John Wayne Airport in Orange County the morning of Jan. 26 and slammed into a hillside 39 minutes later, killing everyone on board.
NTSB investigators have interviewed virtually everyone who had some role in ferrying Bryant through Southern California’s skies, from the mechanic who maintained his favored helicopter, to the broker who arranged his travel, to Bryant’s personal assistant, Catherine Brady.
Brady told the NTSB that while Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, had games scheduled on the 26th for noon and 2 p.m., Bryant had asked her to move up his departure time, from 9:45 a.m. to 9 a.m., because he had wanted to watch another team play.
The morning of the 26th, a Sikorsky S-76B, operated by Island Express Helicopters, was waiting for Bryant at John Wayne Airport. Zobayan took off at 9:06 a.m., carrying Bryant, Gianna and six others: Christina Mauser; Payton and Sarah Chester; John, Keri and Alyssa Altobelli.
At 9:44 a.m., Zobayan, who was hugging the 101 Freeway near Calabasas, informed an air traffic controller he intended to climb above the cloud layer, Marie Moler, an NTSB aircraft performance specialist, wrote in a report released Wednesday. Zobayan began to climb and then banked left, straying from the 101, Moler wrote.
Zobayan, she said, may have “misperceived both pitch and roll angles”: While he told an air traffic controller he was climbing to 4,000 feet, he in fact was descending “rapidly while in a left turn,” the report said.
“When a pilot misperceives attitude and acceleration,” Moler wrote, “it is known as the ‘somatogravic illusion’ and can cause spatial disorientation.” The Sikorsky slammed into a hillside at 184 mph, strewing wreckage across an area the size of a football field.
As noted, the foggy weather was a factor in the tragic helicopter crash. The National Transportation Safety Board reports that Zobayan possibly “misperceived” the angles at which he was descending and banking, which can happen when a pilot becomes disoriented in low visibility.
The documents released include a letter from an unspecified member of the pilot’s team who came to Zobayan’s defense.
“In the many years working with Mr. Zobayan, we texted, emailed and spoke via the phone regarding weather conditions prior to flights I had arranged with Island Express. It was part of his conscientious and detailed nature, innate in him to make sure that conditions were safe to fly,” the letter began.
It continued, “I can certainly attest to the fact that he checked weather continually for his flights, as I had many flights with him as pilot. We communicated at length, always prior to flights, (and often days in advance watching weather patterns) night and day, at any hour, as needed to ensure we were good, clear for the “Go or “No Go” so I could properly advise clients and make alternate arrangements. Many flights were canceled or postponed due to weather at Ara’s direction.”
Flip the pages for the text messages.