Visualizing Kobe Bryant’s fatal helicopter ride

By Dylan Freedman – January 26, 2020

American basketball legend Kobe Bryant died today in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California that also killed 8 others. Using publicly available helicopter data, we can visualize his tragic final journey.

Scroll to view the helicopter trip below:

09:06:42 AM (PST)

At 9:06 AM, the helicopter took off

09:20:51 AM (PST)

Highlighting the helicopter’s path over Glendale shows the circling behavior in detail.


Helicopter data from flightradar24 . Map data from OpenStreetMap