Terrain warning would not have averted Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, NTSB chair says

After a Calabasas helicopter crash in January 2020 killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others, focus quickly turned to technology that warns pilots when they’re too close to the ground or other obstacles.

The Sikorsky S-76B helicopter that pilot Ara Zobayan of Island Express Helicopters was flying that day was not equipped with a terrain awareness warning system, or TAWS. The system displays a map of the terrain ahead of the pilot, highlighting in red the elevated areas that the aircraft could smash into if the aircraft doesn’t pull up.

The problem, NTSB officials now say, is that Zobayan didn’t appear to know which way was up.

Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Tuesday that Zobayan’s flight path showed he was experiencing “spatial disorientation,” a trick that sensors in a person’s inner ear can play when they lose all visibility.

“In this case pilot may not know which way is up or down, whether he or she is leaning left or right,” he said.

See also: Helicopter pilot lost awareness before crash that killed Kobe Bryant, 8 others, board rules

Bill English, a lead NTSB investigator on the Calabasas crash, described the condition as “the leans,” in which pilots think they’re “flying straight and level, when they’re actually in a turn.”

The transcript of air-traffic controllers communications with Zobayan backed up the theory, English said. NTSB records show the pilot told them he was in low visibility, and was ascending to 4,000 feet to escape the clouds; he actually was descending, which sent the helicopter, and everyone on board, plunging into the side of a hill on the outskirts of Calabasas.

TAWS equipment is required on aircraft that routinely fly in low-visibility situations, according to the FAA. Medical helicopters, which can fly at night to remote locations where the pilot is not familiar with the terrain — are included in that designation. Charter flights transporting passengers are not.

The focus on the system was intensified after Jennifer Homendy, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board who was part of the agency’s response on the ground in Calabasas the day of the crash, noted at the time.

“Certainly, TAWS could have helped to provide information to the pilot on what terrain the pilot was flying in,” she told reporters outside the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Malibu/Lost Hills station on Jan. 26, 2000.

Source: Orange County Register