More about the pilot from today's
LA Times article on the victims (who have not been officially identified by the LA Medical Examiner-Coroner's Office).
[redacted]When flight student Darren Kemp heard that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash, his heart sank. He knew that his flight teacher, [redacted], was Bryant’s private pilot.
“He doesn’t let anyone else fly him around but [redacted],” Kemp said.
Kemp recalled [redacted] as a dedicated, caring instructor who wanted to help his students succeed. A video that Kemp filmed in the cockpit showed [redacted] in sunglasses and a mint-green headset, grinning and doing a mock salute at the camera.
When Kemp got divorced, he said, [redacted] helped him through it. When Kemp felt like dropping out, [redacted] encouraged him, telling him: “If you love this, then nothing will stop you.”
“It turns out, he was right,” Kemp said.
[redacted] was a veteran pilot, well-versed in the topography and weather patterns of the Los Angeles basin, said colleague Kurt Deetz, who with [redacted] flew Bryant from 2014 to 2016.
He was reliable and not known for risky flying, said Deetz, who knew him as “Big [redacted].”
“He loved calling himself that,” Deetz said. “He wasn’t big.”
[redacted], he said, “was the type of guy you’d call at 3 a.m. with a problem — anything, this or that — and he’d help you out.”
Even though poor weather forced him to swing northeast of his usual flight path, Sunday’s route — from John Wayne Airport to Camarillo — would have been very familiar to [redacted], Deetz said.
“It wasn’t a question of him not knowing the neighborhood,” he said.
https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-crash-victims