It’s been a year since the devastating helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people on board.
On the anniversary of the NBA icon’s death, the cause of the tragedy is still a mystery — but it may not be for long.
The National Transportation Safety Board next month will hold a virtual hearing to determine the probable cause of the crash.
“The ‘probable cause’ is not assigning blame — it is more the most likely scenario that caused the accident,” Anthony Brickhouse, a former NTSB investigator, told The Post on Monday.
The NTSB has already ruled out engine and mechanical failure on the doomed chopper and, in May, released more than 1,800 pages of evidence collected during its investigation.
“What the NTSB does is they take all that data and they analyze it,” said Brickhouse.
“They look into the human element, they look into the machine — so the actual helicopter — and they look into the environment in which the helicopter was actually operating.”
“I haven’t seen anything to suggest something mechanical went wrong with the helicopter,” Brickouse continued. “So what you do is your focus on the human element and the environmental element.”
“You piece that puzzle back together. You crunch that information.”
“That’s what we’re going to get on the 9th of February,” the day of the hearing.
Meanwhile, here’s what we know about the crash so far:
The flight:
On Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, at around 9:06 a.m., Bryant, 41, his daughter and six other passengers took off in a twin-engine Sikorsky S-76B from John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California.
The legendary Los Angeles Laker was heading to a youth basketball tournament at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, about 85 miles away.
Others on board included assistant basketball coach Christina Mauser, Sarah Chester and her daughter, Payton, and baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife, Keri, and their daughter, Alyssa.
About 15 minutes after takeoff on the cloudy day, pilot Ara Zobayan — who was employed by Island Express Helicopters and had flown Bryant previously — requested permission from Burbank Airport air traffic controllers to enter its airspace.
Due to poor visibility, Zobayan had to request what’s known as “special VFR” permission to fly through, even under the conditions.
After circling for about 11 minutes because of air traffic, the chopper was granted permission to enter the Burbank airspace and then continued moving north toward the Van Nuys Airport.
The crash:
The pilot told air traffic controllers around 9:44 a.m. that he was “climbing” to 4,000 feet to avoid a cloud layer.
In reality, the chopper climbed slightly before suddenly veering left and descending rapidly — crashing into a hillside at approximately 9:45 a.m.
According to the NTSB, the pilot “could have misperceived both pitch and roll angles,” becoming spatially disoriented and sensing his aircraft was climbing when it wasn’t.
“When a pilot misperceives altitude and acceleration it is known as the ‘somatogravic illusion’ and can cause spatial disorientation,” the preliminary report said.
Brickhouse explained: “When you have clear skies and good visibility, you can see what you need to see.
“But unfortunately, when you’re in clouds, sometimes physiologically, your brain, based on your inner ear, you kind of get confused.”
“We’ve seen it in accidents in the past,” he added, “where pilots get into those conditions and they have issues.”
The weather:
The weather on the day of the crash was another fact investigators pored over — with evidence compiled into a 394-page meteorological report.
Videos and photos “depict fog and low clouds obscuring the hilltops,” the report notes, adding that Zobayan struggled with a “low cloud ceiling.”
Lawsuits filed by Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, and the families of the other victims have argued that Zobayan shouldn’t have flown under the conditions.
Both the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Police Department had grounded their fleets that day due to the fog and low clouds.
The helicopter:
The ill-fated helicopter, meanwhile, had a strong safety record, and had even carried Bryant before — including after his last Lakers game in 2016.
“Nothing in this model’s history catches my attention as being negative,” Brickhouse said.
However, the chopper did not have a “black box,” or flight recorder, and also didn’t have TAWS, a terrain awareness system that alerts pilots when they are flying too close to the ground.
It is required in medical helicopters but not in commercial ones like the one used by Bryant, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
At the Feb. 9 hearing, the NTSB will also be making recommendations “to try to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future,” Brickhouse said.
“I’m curious as to what the probable cause will be, what the contributing factors will be, and down the line what will happen to those recommendations.”
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