In his last message before the crash, the pilot, Ara Zobayan, told air traffic control he was climbing to avoid a cloud layer. LOS ANGELES — When the helicopter carrying the basketball legend Kobe Bryant crashed into a fogbound mountainside on Sunday, killing all nine people onboard, the pilot who was struggling to avoid the clouds did not have the legal authority to navigate with his instruments because the aircraft owner did not have the necessary federal certification, according to three sources familiar with the charter helicopter company’s operations.
Island Express Helicopters, which owned the Sikorsky S-76B, had a Federal Aviation Administration operating certification that limited its pilots to flying under what are known as visual flight rules, or V.F.R., with at least three miles of visibility and a cloud ceiling no lower than 1,000 feet above the ground. The company did not have certification for its pilots to fly with instruments, said Kurt Deetz, a pilot and former safety manager at the company.
The helicopter had sophisticated instruments onboard that the F.A.A. has approved for instrument flight, and the pilot, Ara Zobayan, was certified to fly by them. But because of limitations on how the company is approved by the F.A.A. to operate when carrying passengers for hire, he
was required to fly only in conditions of sufficient visibility to navigate visually.
The limitations on Island Express’s operations are not unusual. Another operator at Van Nuys Airport, where the company is based, said none of the charter operators there have gone to the trouble and expense of winning certification for instrument flight, in part because it is normally so simple to navigate at low altitude in Southern California, with its easy-to-follow freeways and sunny weather.
But the new details about Island Express’s F.A.A. certification shed light on the question of why the pilot did not file an instrument flight plan that would have allowed him to climb well above the fog-shrouded hills and head to Camarillo Airport, not far from the basketball tournament where Mr. Bryant and his party were headed.
Island Express did not respond on Thursday to questions about the certification, which was earlier reported on by Forbes.
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