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Audio From Kobe Bryant Crash Reveals Pilot Given Clearance To Fly In Poor Conditions

   DailyWire.com
Kobe Bryant hosts a Kobe A.D. event at MAMA Gallery on November 1, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images)
Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images

New details have emerged about the circumstances surrounding the tragic helicopter crash that took the lives of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, and seven others, including that the pilot was given “clearance to fly in worse than normal weather conditions, without relying on instruments to guide him,” as reported by The Washington Post. The information came to light via recordings of the pilot’s communications with air traffic controllers shortly before the deadly crash Sunday morning.

After departing from Orange County’s John Wayne Airport at 9:06 a.m. PT, the helicopter carrying Bryant flew north to Los Angeles, then northwest from the city. It went down in Calabasas shortly after 9:40 a.m. The first 911 call reporting the crash was received at 9:47 a.m.

ESPN reported Sunday on the exchange between the helicopter’s pilot, Ara Zobayan, and air traffic controllers in the Burbank tower, as revealed in a partial audio of the exchange posted by LiveATC.net. The recording indicates that “a few minutes before the crash, an air traffic controller told Zobayan that he was ‘still too low level for flight following,’ meaning the aircraft was below the level at which it could be picked up by radar due to the area’s hilly terrain,” ESPN reported.

“Additional recordings between Zobayan and air traffic controllers posted on the site indicate that the pilot was getting guidance from controllers as he navigated what was reported to be dense morning fog,” ESPN reports. “Air traffic controllers noted poor visibility around Burbank, just to the north, and Van Nuys, to the northwest.”

Air traffic controllers initially held up the helicopter for other aircraft, then cleared the chopper “to proceed north along Interstate 5 through Burbank before turning west to follow U.S. Route 101, the Ventura Freeway,” the sports network notes.

In a report Monday, The Washington Post provided additional details about what preceded the crash based on the pilot’s communications with air traffic control, including that the pilot “asked for and then was approved for what’s known as special visual flight rules,” allowing him to fly “under the special conditions.”

“The Burbank tower controller responds that it will be a few moments and asks the helicopter to hold,” the Post reports, citing the audio recordings. “Seconds later, the controller tells the pilot that he can plan to transition to the north side of the Van Nuys Airport. He tells the pilot, several departures are coming off a runway and to ‘expect to follow the I-5 north and cross that way.'”

The Post also notes that Zobayan, licensed to fly commercially since 2007, was “qualified to fly in bad weather conditions known as instrument flight rules, according to FAA records,” and was additionally “qualified to teach people to fly in those conditions, indicating that he had significant experience.”

A former Federal Aviation Administration crash investigator told the Post that the flight conditions apparently worsened as Zobayan attempted to follow special visual flight rules, which required him to fly lower for better visibility.

In its report on the communications recordings, ESPN describes the final few second of the ultimately deadly flight: “Shortly after 9:40 a.m., the helicopter turned again, toward the southeast, and climbed to more than 2,000 feet above sea level. It then descended and crashed into a hillside at about 1,400 feet, according to data from Flightradar24. When it struck the ground, the helicopter was flying at about 160 knots (184 mph) and descending at a rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute (45 mph), the Flightradar24 data showed.”

Related: In Past Interview, Kobe Said He Relied On Helicopter Use To Spend More Time With His Children

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