Kobe Bryant helicopter crash: Ara Zobayan, Sarah and Payton Chester identified as victims

The pilot of the doomed helicopter that crashed and killed Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter and several others was praised as the “sweete...

The pilot of the doomed helicopter that crashed and killed Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter and several others was praised as the “sweetest” man who was “especially attentive” to the basketball legend’s family.

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The remaining three people aboard the chopper in Sunday’s fiery California crash were identified as pilot Ara Zobayan and mother-and-daughter Sarah and Payton Chester.

Zobayan was an experienced flyer who “taught aspiring heli pilots to fly and was very much loved in the aviation community,” KTLA’s Christina Pascucci, who is also a licensed pilot, said on Twitter.

Zobayan was “instrument rated,” Pascucci said, meaning that he “was rated to fly in fog/clouds” — the conditions that plagued Sunday’s flight.

He was also confirmed as the pilot in a series of tweets by a friend in the business, using the Twitter name Bella.

“Rest In Peace Ara. One of the sweetest pilots I’ve ever have had the pleasure to meet and converse with while working in the aviation business,” she tweeted, calling him “the sweetest, the funniest… he was purely amazing.”

“Working for the aviation business has allowed me to meet some pretty amazing people and pilots. Ara was definitely one of them,” she wrote in another tweet. “Always so nice, talkative and especially attentive when it came to Kobe and his family. I’m heart broken.”

https://nypost.com/2020/01/27/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-ara-zobayan-sarah-and-payton-chester-identified-as-victims/