Kobe Bryant Causes of Death Revealed
One year after the basketball player and his daughter lost their life, the causes of the helicopter accident are revealed
By Marta Alfaya
February 10th, 2021
On January 26th, 2020, Kobe Bryant, his thirteen-year-old daughter Gianna and six more passengers were travelling by helicopter when suddenly, the pilot lost control of the vehicle, and it crashed in a hill of Calabasas, California. There weren’t any survivors.
At first, the results of the investigation concluded that the accident was due to the fog. That day it was too foggy to fly, but they travelled anyway.
But a year later, newer investigations revealed that the accident was a human mistake. That day, it was too dangerous to fly by helicopter due to the bad weather and the fog, but Bryant needed to travel quickly to get to his daughter’s basketball tournament on time. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, was a professional with lots of years of experience
who had worked for Bryant before.
Moments before the crash, Zobayan communicated to flight controllers that the helicopter was ascending correctly. Later, the investigators discovered that really, the vehicle was descending at an ever-increasing speed, but the pilot couldn’t notice it because of the poor visibility produced by the fog, which made him disoriented. The vehicle continued descending until crashing to a hill.
Investigations also point out that there weren’t any mechanical failures, but the helicopter didn’t have the “black box” recording devices, which are compulsory to have in this type of vehicle. However, this machine wouldn’t have been useful to prevent the accident.
