Moments before Los Angeles basketball great Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter and the seven others perished in a helicopter crash, the pilot had tried to climb out of layer of clouds, but the aircraft then banked sharply and lurched toward the ground. The twin-engine Sikorsky S-76B slammed into a hillside 60 seconds later and burst into flames, killing all nine people on board, according to details of Sunday’s crash revealed on Tuesday by federal aviation safety officials.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) estimated Bryant’s luxury passenger helicopter hit the ground at a speed of more than 2,000 feet per minute. This is a pretty steep descent at high speed,” NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy told a briefing in Calabasas, a town adjacent to the crash scene.
“The time from descent to impact was probably about a minute. Radar data showed that the helicopter had ascended to 2,300 feet — “he was trying to climb out of the cloud layer at the time” — and then began a left descending turn before air traffic control lost contact it, Homendy said
Investigators have offered no explanation for what might have led the aircraft to bank abruptly to one side and then plummet to the ground. But Homendy said the estimated rate of descent “wouldn’t be a normal landing speed. We know this was a higher-energy-impact crash,” she said, adding that investigators had surmised that the helicopter was still in one piece before hitting the ground. Homendy said that clouds, fog and limited visibility reported in the area on Sunday were a key focus of the investigation, which will take at least a year to complete.
The helicopter was not equipped with any kind of “terrain awareness and warning system,” a device that might have alerted the pilot that the aircraft was dangerously close to the hillside, Homendy said. Nor did the chopper carry a “black box” flight data recorder, which would make it easier to piece together the cause of the crash, she said.
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Source: eNCA
