Bryant crash probe to highlight gaps in helicopter safety

Bloomberg

Basketball legend Kobe Bryant’s death as his chartered helicopter crashed in a Southern California fog bank last year highlighted some familiar — and preventable — safety concerns.
They include questionable decisions about whether to take the flight and to proceed in
deteriorating weather; possible
pressure to fly with a celebrity passenger; and a pilot who hadn’t practiced flying in the clouds for months.
As the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was expected to meet on Tuesday to determine the cause of the January 26, 2020, crash that killed Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven other people, it will address factors that occur repeatedly in helicopter accidents, according to aviation safety experts. What makes
it worse, they say, is that preventing such crashes is well
understood.
“We see the fatal accidents, unfortunately, have a predictable pattern,” said Tom Judge, executive director of LifeFlight of Maine, that state’s air-ambulance system. “We know how to mitigate those. It really comes down to, do we have the will in the industry to take on the work that needs to be done? Even if it’s uncomfortable and has some upfront cost, it’s certainly better than a fatal accident.”
Two bills attempting to address helicopter safety in the wake of the Bryant crash were introduced in Congress last year, but didn’t advance. The NTSB was likely to issue a set of recommendations on Tuesday, adding to its previous calls for improved helicopter safety.
There have been 211 fatal helicopter crashes in the US in the 10 years from 2011 through 2020, including 20 last year, according to NTSB.
Bryant was among a group being flown to his daughter’s basketball game by pilot Ara Zobayan. As the Sikorsky S-76B copter was heading northwest from Orange County to an
airport near the sports facility, a bank of fog was hovering over the Los Angeles region at an
altitude of roughly 1,000 to 1,500 feet.
The helicopter had been flying below the clouds and Zobayan had requested a special clearance from air-traffic controllers to proceed in deteriorating conditions, according to data previously released by NTSB. Minutes later, as he approached hills, he radioed a controller to say he was climbing to 4,000 feet to go above the cloud bank.
Within seconds, the helicopter entered a steep left turn and then dove toward the ground.
A preliminary NTSB analysis concluded it was consistent with pilot disorientation that could have caused him to think he was climbing when he was actually plummeting.
The aircraft slammed into the base of a hillside.