The pilot of the helicopter which crashed killing basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, his young daughter, and seven other people had probably become disorientated amid fog, US safety investigators have said. The helicopter smashed into a hillside near Calabasas, California, on 26 January 2020.

Pilot Ara Zobayan was among the dead. He had told air traffic controllers the helicopter was climbing out of heavy cloud when it was actually descending. “This manoeuvre is consistent with the pilot experiencing spatial disorientation in limited visibility conditions,” Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said on Tuesday. The NTSB has been investigating the circumstances around the crash, and is meeting shortly to vote on the probable cause. It is an independent federal agency with no enforcement powers. Zobayan violated federal rules and went against his own flight training by flying into thick clouds, safety officials said.(BBC)…[+]