The Sikorsky S-76 chopper slammed into a steep hillside on Sunday outside Calabasas, California, about 40 miles (65 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, killing all nine people on board, igniting a brush fire and spreading debris over hundreds of feet of grassy terrain.
The National Transportation Board is calling for the public to give it any photographs or video that might have been taken of the weather in the area of the helicopter wreck, which it said left a “devastating accident scene.”
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The NTSB offered no update on the search for victims but said investigators were expected to be on the scene for as many as five days.
The dense fog, and its role in the crash, came under scrutiny on Monday as fans, friends and relatives of the retired NBA great confronted the reality that the charismatic 41-year-old and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were among those on board who died.
Bryant, who won five NBA championships in his 20 years with the Los Angeles Lakers, was known since his playing days to travel frequently by helicopter to avoid the Los Angeles area’s glacial traffic.
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The radio traffic audio indicates the pilot tried to remain below clouds in order to remain in visual contact with the ground and avoid flying on instruments, said Gary Robb, an aviation lawyer and author of the book “Helicopter Crash Litigation.”
Robb said it was “certainly possible” that the pilot was “flying so low to get under the cloud cover that he clipped the top of that mountain that extended into the clouds.”
“The dialogue between the pilot and air traffic control leads me to believe … he kept wanting to go lower and lower, beneath the fog and ceiling, as we call it, and that could have led him to fly so low that he flew into the mountain,” Robb said.
The pilot, in his transmissions, “was calm and controlled the whole time,” Robb said, calling the communications “extremely normal and routine.”
Investigators also would have to consider mechanical failure, Robb said, although he described the Sikorsky twin-engine turbo helicopter as a “reliable” and “generally safe” aircraft.
The mourning continued a day after Bryant’s death. After Lakers fans spontaneously built a shrine to Bryant near the Staples Center where he played his home games, fans left flowers and Bryant jerseys at Lower Merion High School outside Philadelphia, where Bryant played before joining the NBA.
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