Kobe Bryant death: Helicopter crashed while flying in fog so thick it grounded other flights

Local police forces refused to launch own helicopters at time because of poor visibility

The helicopter which crashed in California on Sunday, killing basketball great Kobe Bryant and eight others, was flying in conditions so poor other aircraft were grounded.

At the time the helicopter plunged into a hillside just outside Los Angeles, visibility was so low local police forces had grounded their own choppers because they deemed it too dangerous to fly.

Data from Flightradar24, an internet flight tracking service, showed the helicopter was travelling at 184mph and descending at more than 1,200m a minute when it crashed into the ground, killing everyone on board.

Both the Los Angeles police and the county sheriff’s department had decided to stop flying their own aircraft at the time because of the weather conditions.

The precise cause of the deadly crash is still not known, but experts have suggested the poor visibility is more likely to be behind the sudden descent than mechanical error.

A pilot who had flown Mr Bryant in his helicopter before told the Los Angeles Times the odds of both engines in the Sikorsky S-76 catastrophically failing at the same time were almost zero.

Just before the crash, the air traffic controller can be heard telling the Mr Bryant's pilot he was "too low level" to be picked up by radar.

Just before this in the audio clip, which has been posted online, the pilot, however, can be heard telling the air traffic controller he was still in VFR conditions, which means the visibility was clear enough for him to fly by sight rather than from the instruments onboard.

As well as the basketball legend, among the other victims were Mr Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter Gianni, the pilot of the helicopter – named locally as Ara Zobayan – and a women’s basketball coach from a nearby Orange County school called Christina Mauser.

Also on board were John Altobelli, the head coach of Orange Coast College’s basketball team, and his wife Keri and daughter Alyssa. Alyssa played on the same basketball team as Gianni.

The force of the impact when the helicopter hit the ground was such that debris has been scattered over an area the size of a football pitch.

The rugged terrain is also complicating efforts to examine the site and recover the bodies, said the Los Angeles County medical examiner Jonathan Lucas.

Air accident investigators have been dispatched to examine the crash and ascertain what the cause was.

At a press conference, the National Transportation Safety Board said among the aspects it would investigate were the pilot’s history, the maintenance records of the helicopter, and the records of its owner.

Mr Zobayan was instrument-rated, which means he was qualified to fly the Sikorsky S-76 relying solely on the instruments and without needing to see exactly where he was going.

Witnesses in Calabasas, where the crash occurred, said they could hear the sound of an aircraft but couldn’t see anything because of the fog.

“It was very foggy so we couldn’t see anything,” Colin Storm, a local, said. “But then we heard some sputtering and then a boom.” Once the mist had cleared slightly he said he could see smoke rising from a hillside nearby.

Mr Bryant’s death has prompted an outpouring of grief from basketball fans, particularly in Los Angeles where he spent the entirety of his career, winning multiple championships with the LA Lakers.

He was widely regarded as one of the finest players to ever take to the court, although his legacy is complicated by an allegation of rape in 2003 by a 19-year-old employee at a Colorado resort he was staying at.

Mr Bryant insisted the pair had had consensual sex and no criminal prosecution occurred; a later civil suit against the basketball star was settled privately out of court.