The helicopter that crashed Sunday killing basketball star Kobe Bryant and eight others was owned by a charter company that was certified to operate under visual flight rules, and it was not permitted to carry passengers in weather that limited visibility to the point that its pilots would need to fly solely based on their cockpit gauges, a former pilot for the company told Forbes.
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, as reported by the NY Times.
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