I'm getting this news through hearsay, so I can't post a source yet, but apparently the helicopter that Kobe's group was flying on was given "special permission" to fly in fog conditions that had grounded all other copters. Wtf?
Well....there's nuance to that.
Okay so when flying, whether it's an airplane or a helicopter or a blimp or whatever, there's two sets of "rules" - visual flight rules (VFR) and instrument flight rules (IFR). In VFR, pilots can pretty much go anywhere however they want as long as they stay out of strictly controlled parts of airspace (like around busy airports and stuff, if they want to go through those they must ask for clearance), and it's their own job to look out for other air traffic, to keep clear of ground obstacles and terrain, and most importantly to stay out of clouds. VFR has certain strict rules for how far you have to stay away from clouds - something like 500 feet beneath, 1,000 to 2,000 feet laterally, and you need I think 3 miles of general visibility, which takes into account haze and things like that.
IFR is far more strict. In IFR, the pilot isn't responsible for any of those things they're responsible for in VFR - they must file a specific route plan ahead of time, and air traffic control assigns them a specific altitude. ATC can change these things as needed during the flight, but pilots themselves cannot deviate from them unless ATC gives them permission. The point here is that ATC will always keep them high enough to avoid the ground and ground-based obstacles, and will give them routing instructions as necessary to avoid all the other traffic, which ATC is keeping track of by radar. Because ATC is doing all the "avoiding", IFR pilots can fly through and in clouds without worrying, but of course when they have no reference to the ground they have to keep control of their plane or helicopter by reference to the instruments.
The weather doesn't HAVE to be bad for you to file and fly IFR - passenger airline flights are practically always IFR flights, no matter how clear the weather - but the opposite isn't true; if the weather is bad enough then VFR flight isn't allowed at all period, and airports will not let VFR traffic take off or land.
But there is an exception called Special VFR, that lets you operate in worse-than-VFR weather without an IFR flight plan. In Special VFR the weather requirements are reduced - you only need 1 mile of visibility, and rather than having to stay a certain distance away from clouds, generally you now just have to stay out of them, and within constant sight of the ground. You can only fly Special VFR inside strictly controlled airspace. The idea behind Special VFR is usually that if you're intending to fly someplace where the weather is fine for VFR for most of the way but it just so happens that right around your takeoff airport the weather conditions aren't quite good enough, you can still leave - or on the other hand, if your whole flight has been free and clear but you get to the destination airport and the weather has gotten unexpectedly poor there, you can ask for the Special VFR clearance and still land.
Helicopters use Special VFR a LOT, when they're operating around cities. This makes some sense, since helicopters can safely fly lower, and slower, than airplanes generally do; and also because the kind of work helicopters do - not always just flying "point A to point B" - doesn't lend itself easily to flying an IFR flight plan. Anybody under the same circumstances can ask for a Special VFR clearance - so it's important to realize that despite the "special" in the name, Kobe Bryant's helicopter wasn't actually given "special treatment" - when police say their own helicopters were grounded what they mean is that it's their departmental policy to not fly in those weather conditions. They -could- ask for the same kind of clearance, if they wanted, and they would get it. But, I mean obviously, it's kind of smart for them not to.
That said, Kobe's helicopter was in fact just flying A to B this time, and
it was a deluxe range model that was well capable of flying IFR; but for whatever reason the pilot chose not to do that. Maybe it was a time-constraint thing; they were flying to get to his daughter's basketball game, and filing IFR plans take some time, not to mention that in busy airspace like LA it might be a little while before ATC releases an aircraft to take-off that isn't part of the overall traffic "flow" into and out of the area, because they have to wait for an ideal moment to squeeze it in. Special VFR avoids all that, so it may have seemed more convenient in the moment. Pressure to meet a travel deadline very often leads pilots to make bad choices that have bad consequences. The helicopter pilot had the right to fly Special VFR, but he probably should not have.
Looking at the flight track of the helicopter, everything seems to have been going fine until it got close to its destination, when suddenly it looks like it tries to make a turnaround and climbs. The popular speculation right now is that the helicopter either encountered a bank of clouds that was suddenly lower than the rest, or overall visibility very quickly deteriorated, or else the terrain just kept rising enough in that area that there was no more room underneath the clouds to fly in anymore, so the pilot decided to climb through the clouds and come out on top. Which might have otherwise worked, except there were mountains in that area that the helicopter couldn't see because of the clouds, and maybe the helicopter didn't climb fast enough. It's also possible that the pilot became disoriented once in the clouds and lost control, and fell. The pilot WAS instrument rated, but it may have been a while since he'd actually flown in instrument conditions.
Since this was a deadly accident, it will be investigated by the NTSB, who will try to find out exactly what happened. Don't hold your breath waiting though, the NTSB has a mandatory minimum of 1 year for an accident investigation, with like a preliminary report after 6 months at the earliest.
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