We may never know for sure if the helicopter had indeed entered the clouds. But if it did, then it had crossed a kind of invisible line. It was now engaged in what
air-crash investigators call “continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions.” Basically, a pilot dependent on seeing the ground to stay oriented can no longer see the ground. Amid a sudden whiteout, disorientation can come surprisingly quickly. “When you get in the soup, your senses don’t work,” Cline, the aviation professor, said. “For me, I always feel like I’m falling to the right. Other people might feel like they’re falling to the left, or climbing.”
A trained pilot can stay right-side up by paying attention to the instruments on his panel. But at low altitude over Calabasas, Bryant’s pilot also had another problem. He knew that the ground ahead was rising, and he couldn’t see it. To avoid hitting it, he could keep climbing, and hope that he’d gain altitude faster than the ground underneath him. Or he could slow to a stop and descend vertically until he popped out of the bottom of the cloud.
Based on the subsequent track of the aircraft, however, it seems that the pilot decided to take a third option. According to data transmitted by its transponder, at 15 seconds past 9:45 a.m. the pilot banked to the left, then dove. Why? We can never get into his head to know for sure. But based on my own experience flying light aircraft, the sudden intensification of danger creates of sense of mental overload in which it’s nearly impossible to rationally weigh one’s various options. Instead, one takes the most immediate and obvious choice. In this case, that meant trying to get back into clear air by diving back under the cloud layer while pulling a hard 180 to retreat from the dangerous terrain.
Eighteen seconds after beginning the turn, the helicopter had lost 800 feet and returned to an easterly heading. But what the pilot had failed to reckon with is that the ground rose not only straight ahead, but on the sides as well. The S-76B had impacted a hillside above the Los Virgenes Municipal Water District facility at a speed of 170 mph.