i m going to die if i don t get out of this quickly. dennis kenyon, a former british royal air force pilot, is a legendary flyer who has logged thousands of hours aloft. i m up to 14,000 flying hours. i ve flown 124 different types of airplane which includes 34 helicopters. his aeronautic skills are on display in numerous feature films. i ve done, i don t know, probably a couple dozen feature films. i did spy who loved me, blackhawk down. and he serves as a flight safety expert. my job is going around, looking at shows, and making certain they are safe and watching other pilots. what he s most famous for is helicopter aerobatic flying. since 1986, dennis has been a leading competitor, winning the world championship in 1992.
out of the chopper, shaken but only slightly hurt. he actually wasn t even hurt that bad. a few cuts on the face and couple of teeth knocked out, i understand. the chopper has not fared as well. the helicopter was totaled, completely totaled. unusable. within an hour, a rueful dennis is not just walking and talking, he s giving the news conference he had always hoped to avoid. dennis, the safety evaluator, has to assess his own performance and realizes where he d gone wrong. he d forgotten one adjustment to his program and had fallen victim to the high density altitude at the airfield that day. as soon as i started the maneuver, i thought this helicopter is performing fairly normally so i ran in at the normal height, at the normal speed. he was too low and too slow for this place and time. there wasn t sufficient air space to recover. at that density. on a cold day in england, it
would be more than adequate. in the 50 years prior to his crash, at least ten american and european pilots died doing this maneuver in air shows. so dennis survival is astounding. i think it s pretty miraculous that he walked away from this crash. how hard he hit that ground. i wish i was religious, but if there was a god, it s got to be him. dennis recovery is so quick, he s able to get back into the game, performing at another world competition later that same year. that s where i got fourth this time. so, still got in. as these cameras have shown us, a brush with death could be closer than most of us would like to think. it can come to those who court it and those who take every precaution to avoid it. it visits the novice and the world-class champion. but if you re lucky enough to
but then, coming out of the loop, a shocking event. when he was doing his wing over and he was coming straight to the ground, i m thinking at that point, i hope he can pull out of this. i was already aligning the machine for the next maneuver. it just struck the ground. son of a [ bleep ]. call 911! i thought that was it. he was gone. but dennis is not dead. merely stunned. how did he get here? the aircraft broke up about me and the glass shattered and i was in the desert dust. everybody was in shock. i mean, it was a moment of total, oh, my god, what do we do? dennis is not out of danger. he struggles to get free of the wreckage before dripping fuel can ignite the helicopter. i m going to die if i don t get out of this quickly, if it catches on fire. he quickly shuts off the fuel lines, then amazingly, he crawls
which actually means hotter, thinner air, giving the pilot less lift and less power. i had to take certain steps, make certain changes to my routine. dennis calculates the changes he ll make and at first, everything goes smoothly. the standard display routine commences with a pirouette on the left front skids, rotating the helicopter. i got my camera out to take footage of his performance. i was excited about capturing it on camera. i turned to 300 feet, then a backflip away from the crowd to get distance from the crowd to commence the run-in for the opening maneuver which is a loop. so far, the impressive routine seems flawless. everything looked normal. it s very rare to see a helicopter pilot be able to do maneuvers like that. i never thought it was going wrong. but then, coming out of the loop, a shocking event.