A New Zealand pilot was one of two members of a helicopter crew battling a wildfire in Yosemite National Park who were killed when their aircraft crashed on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Precision LLC – an aviation company known online as Flyprecision – posted Sunday that two members of its team had died.<\/p>\n
“We are devastated by this loss and are struggling to find the words,” the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Greg King, a New Zealand pilot for Precision Helicopters since 2022, was identified as one of the people who died in the crash, the Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protection announced Monday.<\/p>\n
The Eurocopter AS32 helicopter crashed just before 3pm local time, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.<\/p>\n
The pilots were conducting suppression operations on the Dome Fire in Yosemite National Park when the aircraft went down. They were the only people on board at the time.<\/p>\n
Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protection has confirmed that King was originally from New Zealand and worked for numerous aviation companies in this country before he moved to Alaska, including The Helicopter Line, Mt Cook Skiplanes and Air Safaris NZ.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said his current contract was for Price Valley Helitack, based in Idaho.<\/p>\n
“The helicopter was currently assigned and working on the Dome Fire in Yosemite, CA. The two pilots were flying a Super Puma helicopter that was doing bucket work on the fire at the time of the incident that resulted in a crash.”<\/p>\n
When King worked at Soloy – an aviation company based in Wasilla Alaska – he had worked under contract for the Division of Forestry & Fire Protection in multiple different areas of the state and on multiple fires across the state, as well as traveling to fires in the lower 48 US states.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said King also met his wife at the Division of Forestry & Fire Protection, and she was still employed there.<\/p>\n
“So the connection between the State of Alaska and the Division of Forestry & Fire Protection runs deep with years of working with him as a coworker, a wildland aviator and overall family.<\/p>\n
“His wife has allowed the agency to release his name and speak on the behalf of the family to provide some space for the family and coworkers to grieve while being able to tell his story and share his life and career.”<\/p>\n
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, and the Forest Service will also look into the incident.<\/p>\n
NTSB investigators have not yet reached the scene and will travel there “when fire conditions allow”, according to the agency.<\/p>\n
The NTSB said it will post a preliminary report on the incident within 30 days.<\/p>\n
The Dome Fire grew by 283 acres Saturday night, according to wildfire authorities, and was 3222 acres and 15 percent contained as of Monday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New Zealand pilot was one of two members of a helicopter crew battling a wildfire in Yosemite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-607823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}