Kobe Bryant made the decision to move his helicopter flight 45 minutes earlier than it was initially scheduled, according to documents obtained.
The thick fog mounting over the Calabasas hillside would have cleared ff he had flown at his original time, and potentially cleared visibility for the pilot, Ara Zobayan.
Cate Brady, Bryant’s personal assistant, conversed to crash investigators in an interview and shed light on the time change, “That particular day, for Sunday, I actually changed the time the night before, probably around 6:00 or 7:00 p.m., because Bryant had decided he wanted to go to watch another team play before his game.”
“So it was supposed to be a 9:45 departure, but the night before we changed it to a 9:00 a.m. departure.”
At the time which the fatal crash happened, right before 10am, the fog was thick but just 45 minutes later the hillside became visible.
The newly released interview is part of a 1,700-page document that was first released on Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), who has been investigating the cause of the crash since January 26.
Brady also added that the Bryant’s never put pressure on any pilot to fly in bad weather. The mere change in schedule was due to Kobe wanting to watch the game ahead of theirs.
