(no subject)

[camwyn]

The helicopter community is amazingly small compared to the fixed-wing aviation community in the States. There's a grand total of maybe five thousand pilots who hold professional rotorcraft licenses in this country. I don't know if that includes the military or not, but regardless, it's a damn small community.

In practical terms, this means that every time a news story turns up about a tourist helicopter crashing, I spend the next two days waiting for the police or the NTSB or whoever to release the pilot's name. Because there is a genuine, non-zero chance that I might actually know the pilot.

I have yet to find a source naming the pilot in the recent Liberty Helicopters crash in the East River, but... well, we'll see.

Comments

[delight]

It's been released here, if you still need to know! (I'm NY EMS). The pilot is doing well all things considered.

[camwyn]

It's okay. I saw the name on Reuters; he's no one I know.