Bryant helicopter was 100 feet from clear skies

LOS ANGELES >> A witness to the deadly crash of a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant and eight others said it sounded normal just before slamming into a hillside and wreckage at the scene showed no sign of engine failure, federal investigators said in a report released Friday.

The Jan. 26 crash occurred in cloudy conditions and experts said the “investigative update” from the National Transportation Safety Board reinforces the notion the pilot became disoriented and crashed while trying to get to clear skies around Calabasas.

The veteran pilot, Ara Zobayan, came agonizingly close to finding his way out of the clouds.

He told air traffic control he was climbing to 4,000 feet. He ascended to 2,300 feet, just 100 feet from what camera footage later reviewed by the NTSB showed was the top of the clouds. But rather than continuing higher, Zobayan did a high-speed descent and left turn in rapidly rising terrain. He slammed into the hillside at more than 180 mph.

“If you exit the bottom of the clouds at 4,000 feet per minute at that high speed, you’ve certainly lost control of the aircraft,” air safety consultant Kipp Lau said.

Mike Sagely, a helicopter pilot in the Los Angeles area with 35 years of flying experience, said the aircraft’s last minutes suggest Zobayan had started to execute a maneuver designed to pop above the clouds by flying up and forward.

When pilots try to turn instead of sticking with the pop-up maneuver, “probably in the neighborhood of 80 to 90% of the time, it’s catastrophic,” he said.