Kobe Bryant death: thick cloud and fog grounded police choppers at time of crash – sky news, sky.com
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The pilot of the doomed helicopter carrying NBA legend Kobe Bryant was battling thick cloud at the time of the fatal crash, with visibility so poor that police choppers had been grounded.
National Transportation Safety Board official Jennifer Homendy told reporters on Monday that flying conditions were far from ideal when the private aircraft went down in southern California at around 9. am on Sunday.
She said authorities were still examining evidence from the “devastating accident scene”, with emergency workers having recovered three bodies from the crash site so far .
Image: Bryant pictured with his daughter Gianna in Las Vegas in July last year
Image: Emergency workers have been seen removing bodies from the crash site
Ms Homendy held the press briefing in Los Angeles hours after a police spokesman told the LA Times that the conditions failed to meet “our minimum standards for flying”.
Both the Los Angeles Police Department and county sheriff’s department had grounded their own choppers, and the aircraft carrying
Bryant and his teenage daughter Gianna received a safety warning moments before it crashed.
An audio recording revealed the pilot, identified as Ara Zobayan, was told “you’re too low for flight following at this time” seconds before the helicopter disappeared from radar.
It is understood that the pilot had requested ‘flight following’, which is a US aerospace term for radar monitoring.
Mr Zobayan has been described as an “experienced pilot” who had 8, hours of flight time under his belt, and had been climbing to avoid a cloud layer before the chopper crashed .
Ms Homendy said: “The pilot had a commercial certificate. He was a certified flight instructor. (As of) July , he had 8, hours of flight time. It’s an experienced pilot. ”
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