More information continues to pour out in the months since Kobe Bryant and his daughter tragically passed away in a helicopter crash in January.
According to Bryant’s personal assistant Cate Brady, the Los Angeles Lakers legend scheduled his flight from 9:45 a.m. to 9 a.m. just the night before the crash that would kill him, his daughter Gianna and seven other people. That helicopter ultimately went down just before 10:00am, and if it had stayed at its original time, the blinding fog that the pilot experience would’ve likely dies down.
“That particular day, for Sunday, I actually changed the time the night before, probably around 6:00 or 7:00 p.m., because Bryant had decided he wanted to go to watch another team play before his game,” Brady said who was Bryant’s personal assistant since May 2019, via the Daily Mail. “So it was supposed to be a 9:45 departure, but the night before we changed it to a 9:00 a.m. departure.”
Federal investigators believe the pilot was disoriented by the thick fog, which cleared up as the morning developed. There was fog at the time but it cleared 45 minutes later.
One of the questions asked to her was if Bryant ever put the helicopter company under pressure to fly under tough weather conditions. “I don’t want to answer that question because it’s never occurred,” Brady stated. “If there was an issue, I have been Kobe’s assistant for long enough to volunteer to drive him. But we’ve never had that happen, so I don’t know the exact answer to that.”
Investigators believe the pilot Ara Zobayan was disoriented before the crash, because he told air traffic control he was ascending to 4,000 feet when he was actually descending to the ground. “Calculated apparent angles at this time show that the pilot could have misperceived both pitch and roll angles,” one report stated. “During the final descent the pilot, responding to [air traffic control], stated that they were climbing to four thousand.”
Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, has filed a lawsuit against the pilot, helicopter company, and owner of the helicopter.
