Vancouver Island pilot, forestry worker killed in helicopter crash<\/p>\n
Published 11:00 am Wednesday, July 15, 2026<\/p>\n
Two people have died after a helicopter crash in Loughborough Inlet, just north of Sayward on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
According to a Facebook post by Campbell River-based West Coast Helicopters, a Hughes 500 helicopter was being flown in the area for forestry operations. At 6:15 a.m., the helicopter went down with a pilot and two forestry workers from CFMG. The pilot, Riley Browne who worked for West Coast Helicopters, and a CFMG crew member did not survive. The other CFMG crew member did survive the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cRiley was a good friend and pilot to all who worked with him,\u201d the post by WCH says. \u201cHe always had a smile on his face, eager to help. Riley started his flying career at WCH in 2021. He was one of the pillars of the company. We all loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post said that Browne is from a well-known Port McNeill family and that their condolences went out to the family and community.<\/p>\n
The Gazette has reached out to CFMG for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vancouver Island pilot, forestry worker killed in helicopter crash Published 11:00 am Wednesday, July 15, 2026 Two people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674,36245],"class_list":["post-804074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey","tag-vancouver-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}