Kobe Bryant Helicopter Crash Update: Possible Cause Explained By Pilot

A California pilot trained to fly in the area where Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed has explained the closest possible scenario that occurred during the tragedy.

Jeff Wise is a trained pilot who is very familiar with the area where Bryant’s helicopter crashed. After collecting enough information from transponder data, air traffic control audio recordings and reports from Bryant’s case, combined with his experience as a pilot who was trained in the exact area, Wise wrote an article in which he explained the closest possible scenario that happened on the tragic Sunday morning at Calabasas.

Wise revealed that “the weather and terrain conditions were similar to those that have killed many helicopter pilots over the years, with fog and clouds masking rugged and rising terrain.”

Bryant’s Sikorsky S-76B, which was built in 1991, took off shortly after 9 a.m. EST, heading to his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks. According to Wise, it was approximately 70 miles to the northwest and the helicopter was now about to trace “a circuitous route.”

“Over the course of the next 40 minutes, the helicopter would trace a circuitous route around the Los Angeles basin as it negotiated mountains and busy airspace in three main phases: first, cutting across the broad coastal plain of central Los Angeles, then winding around the basin of the San Fernando Valley to its north, before a final ill-fated attempt to cross the rising terrain that led west to Thousand Oaks,” Wise wrote.

Wise figured out that Bryant’s pilot was flying according to Visual Flight Rules (VFR). This means he was relying on his ability to see the terrain below him, and hence had to stay below the clouds.

Things could have been completely different if Bryant’s pilot used an alternative – the IFR.

“He could have contacted air traffic controllers and switched to Instrument Flight Rules, or IFR, that would have allowed him to climb up through the clouds. Controllers would have given him a series of waypoints to follow that would keep him well clear of terrain, dangerous weather, and other aircraft,” Wise explained.

However, the Lakers legend might have been in a hurry and IFR wouldn’t be a good choice as it takes more time compared to VFR.

“Southern California airspace is extremely busy, and they might tell you to wait an hour. Doesn’t matter if you’re Kobe Bryant,” assistant professor of aviation at the City University of New York Paul Cline explained to Wise.

Wise described that when the helicopter intercepted the Ventura Freeway near the southwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley, it was led to the wooded slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu beyond. Straight ahead, the freeway climbed and zigzagged as it negotiated the higher terrain that led to Thousand Oaks. The journey was almost at an end: the Mamba Sports Academy lay just 17 miles to the west.

“For the first time, though, the helicopter was no longer flying over the flat expanse of dense urban Los Angeles. Here, at the suburban fringes, the terrain was hilly and climbing. To make matters worse, the canyon that stretched to the south has a tendency to funnel in the maritime fog,” the expert explained.

As the helicopter approached Calabasas, it was less than 500 feet above the ground and “visibility was not good.”

Wanting to put a safety margin between himself and the increasingly hilly terrain, Wise concluded that the pilot began a brisk climb, ascending nearly 1,000 feet in 36 seconds.

It is unsure whether the helicopter had indeed entered the clouds or not, but if it did, Wise believed that it had “crossed a kind of invisible line.”

"It was now engaged in what air-crash investigators call 'continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions,'" he said.

Basically, a pilot dependent on seeing the ground to stay oriented can no longer see the ground. According to Wise, amid a sudden whiteout, disorientation can come as a shock.

“When you get in the ‘soup,’ (a situation where an aircraft in in cloud or fog, without exterior visibility) your senses don’t work. For me, I always feel like I’m falling to the right. Other people might feel like they’re falling to the left, or climbing,” Cline told Wise.

Bryant’s pilot must have known that the ground ahead was rising, and he couldn’t see it. To avoid hitting it, he could keep climbing and hope that he’d gain altitude faster than the ground underneath him. He could also slow to a stop and descend vertically until he popped out of the bottom of the cloud.

But according to Wise, it seems that the pilot decided to take a third option because at 15 seconds past 9:45 a.m. EST, the pilot banked to the left, then dove.

Wise couldn’t figure out why, but based on his own experience flying light aircraft, “the sudden intensification of danger creates of sense of mental overload in which it’s nearly impossible to rationally weigh one’s various options. Instead, one takes the most immediate and obvious choice.”

In Bryant’s case, Wise said that the best option was “trying to get back into clear air by diving back under the cloud layer while pulling a hard 180 to retreat from the dangerous terrain.”

After 18 seconds from beginning the turn, Wise concluded that “the helicopter had lost 800 feet and returned to an easterly heading. But what the pilot had failed to reckon with is that the ground rose not only straight ahead, but on the sides as well. The S-76B had impacted a hillside above the Los Virgenes Municipal Water District facility at a speed of 170 mph.”

It then eventually crashed.