On the morning of January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant and eight others, including his 13-year-old
daughter, Gianna, were killed after their helicopter crashed into a hillside in Calabasas,
California.
The group was on its way to a youth basketball tournament in Thousand Oaks, California at
Bryant's Mamba Sports Academy at the time of the tragic accident.
While the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office determined that the cause of death for all
nine victims was blunt force trauma, the official cause of the crash itself is still under investigation.
According to Jennifer Komendy of the National Transportation Safety Board, it will be at
least a year before the final report on the crash is released.
On the day of the crash, TMZ reported that an eyewitness had said that they heard sputtering
from the helicopter's engine as the vehicle came down.
Now, more than a week after the accident, 911 calls pertaining to the incident have
been released, providing chilling eyewitness accounts regarding just what happened on that
fateful morning in Calabasas.
The released calls all touch on the idea that visibility was extremely low in the area at
the time of the crash due to heavy fog.
"I just heard a helicopter go over me.
It went over my head.
It's thick in clouds.
And then I just, I heard a pop, and it immediately stopped."
Another witness had trouble identifying the aircraft as a helicopter due to the poor weather
conditions.
"I'm walking on the trail.
I could hear the plane, I think it was, in the clouds.
We couldn't see it.
And then we just heard a 'boom' and a dead sound, and then I could see the flames."
One eyewitness who was farther away from the actual crash site also reported seeing the
flames.
"A helicopter crashed into a mountain.
We heard it.
And now I'm looking at the flames."
The calls paint a devastating picture of the final moments of all aboard the helicopter,
but there are still quite a few unanswered questions.
Due to a missing piece of crucial equipment, the world may never know what exactly occurred
during the helicopter's last moments in the air.
At the time of the fatal crash, Kobe Bryant's longtime pilot of choice, Ara Zobayan, was
flying the helicopter.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the 50-year-old was described as the "chief pilot" at Island
Express Helicopters, the company that owned the helicopter involved.
Zobayan, an experienced pilot who actually flew Bryant to his final Lakers game back
in 2016, had more than 8,000 hours of flight time under his belt.
But despite Zobayan's years of experience, the helicopter he was flying allegedly lacked
a few important pieces of equipment at takeoff.
The helicopter was reportedly lacking a cockpit voice recorder, a device that could have provided
clarity of what happened inside the helicopter in its final moments airborne.
Island Express reportedly removed the device in March 2016, after purchasing the helicopter
from the State of Illinois, and there is no record of it ever being replaced.
The National Transportation Safety Board has asked for all aircraft to be equipped with
that device, but that request has not been supported by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Jennifer Komendy of the NTSB said the presence of the recorder would have been a significant
help to the investigation.
However, Zobayan did have an iPad with him which has been recovered by investigators
for further examination.
In addition to the missing cockpit voice recorder, the NTSB also revealed that the helicopter
carrying Kobe Bryant and eight others lacked a terrain awareness and warning system, or
"TAWS" for short.
According to the New York Post, a TAWS device would have made an audible alarm in the cockpit
as the helicopter neared dangerously low terrain.
"This helicopter crashed in very thick fog right up against the side of a mountain, it
would've given audible alerts as well as a visual display."
However, even though the TAWS was not installed, the Post reports that there was a GPS-based
warning system on board.
One air safety consultant told The New York Times that it's too early in the investigation
to know whether the system could have helped prevent the crash from happening.
In light of the tragic accident, Island Express Helicopters has suspended all services.
On January 30th, the company posted the following message on its website:
"The shock of the accident affected all staff, and management decided that service would
be suspended until such time as it was deemed appropriate for staff and customers."
While a final report on the helicopter crash is not expected anytime soon, a preliminary
report is slated to be released.
Hopefully, it will shed more light on the devastating accident and provide some sense
of closure to the victims' loved ones.