killed Sept. 20<\/a> when the Super Puma they were flying for Precision Helicopters crashed while battling the Dome Fire in Yosemite National Park. The large, Type 1 helicopter was working the fire from above with a water bucket slung beneath it, said Andy Jones, chief of aviation for the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.<\/p>\nJones said the aircraft suffered what investigators call a significant event, a term that covers any possibility, mechanical or otherwise, until the cause is known. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating, and Jones said a final report could take anywhere from six months to more than a year.<\/p>\n
Cutter\u2019s name had been withheld pending family notification. The Payette National Forest in Idaho identified him Monday in a statement that said both men flew an exclusive-use helicopter for the forest and were assigned to the Price Valley Rappel Crew in New Meadows, Idaho.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese were skilled pilots working diligently in suppression efforts and had been instrumental to ground crews in gaining progress on the Dome Fire,\u201d forest leadership wrote.<\/p>\n
Cutter will be returned Tuesday to Park City, Utah, through Heber Airport, where a separate procession is planned. The Forest Service asked the public to respect the privacy of both families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest thing we encounter as land managers is the loss of life,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
King built his reputation in some of the most demanding flying in Alaska, Jones said: long-line and construction work, then ferrying heli-skiers into the mountains of Southcentral Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cUtility work is not an easy job and it takes the most skilled pilots in the world to do this job,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
He later spent more than five years flying wildfires for the division as a contract pilot. Jones said the state holds exclusive-use contracts on seven helicopters, each committed for more than 120 days of the fire season, and the arrangement makes the line between employee and contractor all but meaningless.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally what that means is they\u2019re here every day,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThey practically sleep with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones said that even though contract pilots are not state employees, \u201cthey\u2019re family.\u201d<\/p>\n
King eventually moved on to other companies, as helicopter pilots tend to do, Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re nomads,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re always chasing that next dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time of the crash, King had flown rappel support, bucket missions and multi-mission helicopter work, a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 Jones described as the summit of the profession.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg hit that pinnacle of what all of us are trying to hit as a helicopter pilot or as a utility pilot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His reach extended well past the cockpit. Jones said King \u201chad a profound effect on many of our engine crews, our field crews, our hotshot crews,\u201d along with prevention staff and nearly every corner of the division.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of us helicopter pilots like to focus in on what we do,\u201d Jones said, referring to the cyclic and collective, a helicopter\u2019s primary flight controls. \u201cCyclic, collective, go fight fire. But Greg went above and beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n
King was a son, a husband and a father, said Emery Johnson, the division\u2019s statewide public information coordinator. His wife works full time for the division and has asked for privacy while she grieves. Johnson said the division is serving as a liaison among the family, the fire\u2019s incident management team, the federal agencies and the helicopter company.<\/p>\n
Johnson said the crash came during a fire season that has already claimed the lives of numerous aviation and ground firefighters.<\/p>\n
Jones said the pilots hold a particular place in the lives of the crews who depend on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the ones who take us out to the fires,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re the ones who bring us home, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
And on Tuesday evening, Alaska will bring one of them home.<\/p>\n
See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com<\/a><\/p>\nCopyright 2026 KTUU. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Nine days after he died fighting a wildfire in California, helicopter pilot Greg King…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[152248,4162,152241,152242,188324,7,133560,9,8,23655,175,185458,188326,591,100,188325,188327,2699,535],"class_list":["post-480197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ak","tag-alaska","tag-alaska-news","tag-anchorage-news","tag-anchroage","tag-california","tag-california-crash","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-firefighting","tag-fires","tag-greg-king","tag-heli-crash","tag-helicopter-crash","tag-news","tag-palmer-alaska","tag-palmer-news","tag-return","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}