The two engines of the helicopter that crashed in hazy, cloudy weather on a California hillside last month, killing basketball great Kobe Bryant and eight others, showed no evidence of a “catastrophic internal failure,” federal investigators said on Friday. Robert Clifford, a Chicago-based aviation disaster lawyer, said flying a helicopter in low visibility is ill-advised without two pilots, even if navigating by instruments. “An experienced but nevertheless single pilot in bad weather is a bad formula for the safe operation of a helicopter,” he told Reuters. Shortly before radar contact with Bryant’s helicopter was lost, the pilot had told air traffic control he was trying to climb above a cloud layer, the NTSB said. “The entire fuselage/cabin and both engines were subjected to a post-crash fire,” the report said.

Source: National Post February 07, 2020 22:07 UTC