About the time of the accident I had just started flying again to get my CFII reinstated after many years away, so many of the issues discussed here are relevant, especially from a teaching perspective. The one thing no one ever seems to discuss with regard to this tragedy is the true (to me anyway) elephant in the room: there was no need to fly a helicopter from KSNA, available rwy length 5700 ft to KCMA, available rwy length 6000 ft. There are no less than four instrument approaches into Camarillo (including a GPS LPV) and they are routine for airplane pilots. There was simply no requirement for a helicopter on this flight, helicopters generally being required when there is no runway to land on. Maybe it is easy to say in hindsight, but a responsible pilot would have referred this flight to a 135 operation using airplanes, e.g Gulfstreams, King Airs, etc. As stated by others, there is an irresistible urge to not turn away work. Money was not a consideration for Kobe Bryant, getting there safely was. You can use a snorkel tube to work underwater but a scuba tank does a much better job. Aside from the obvious, i.e. a pilot used to VFR flying into IMC, the even more obvious was that there was no immediate need to use a helicopter for a what is a routine airplane operation. You can look at this and see the cascading number of mistakes made that led to a disaster, but the biggest mistake was choosing the wrong equipment for the job. With reference to aeronautical decision making, this was the biggest mistake of all. Mr. Bryant was not trained to make this decision but his pilot was and should have done so.