Gullibell, I think it has been established that Ara was not using the autopilot - as he "should have been."
SAS, of course we cannot know what Ara was thinking. But we can make a good guess. One of Ara's pilots relayed a story to the NTSB about how Ara flew offshore and made an IMC descent to get under an overcast so he could get back in toward land. We can derive from that that Ara was at least competent controlling the helicopter on instruments. By watching the various video recreations of the Kobe crash and pairing them with his ATC conversations, it appears that when Ara reported that he was climbing to 4,000 feet he was *actually* in a steep descending left turn. Clearly, Ara was not - could not have been - looking at his instruments as he pulled the trigger for that transmission. So what *was* he doing? Where were his eyes?
The Big Question is: What caused a proficient instrument pilot to screw up what "should" have been a relatively simple climb-to-VFR through a thin layer? To even try to answer that leads to the thirteen pages of speculation on websites like this. And obviously, we'll never know. But many of us have been in his shoes. Those of us who have - and lived to tell the tale - have "some" idea of what was going on in that cockpit. Even taking your eyes off the gauges for a couple of seconds can cause a pilot to get Spatial-D, whether to re-center the GPS or to look down and hit the IDENT button...whatever. Sh*t happens fast, especially when you're bopping along at 140 knots.