60 Helicopter pilots

Charles "Chuck" Aaron is one of a handful of pilots licensed by the FAA to perform aerobatics in a helicopter in the United States, and one of only four such pilots in the world. In 1980, Aaron worked on the air rescue program for NASA's Space Shuttle, and he founded his own company, FX Helicopters in Westlake Village, California in 1997. Aaron announced his retirement from the airshow circuit in 2015 and made his last performance at the 2015 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Las Vegas.

Valérie André is a veteran of the French resistance, a neurosurgeon, an aviator and the first female member of the military to achieve the rank of General Officer, in 1976, as Physician General. In 1981, she was promoted to Inspector General of Medicine. A helicopter pilot, she is the first woman to have piloted a helicopter in a combat zone. She is also a founding member of the Académie de l'air et de l'espace.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, is the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He is eighth in the line of succession to the British throne.

Vernice Armour is a former United States Marine Corps officer who was the first African-American female naval aviator in the Marine Corps and the first African American female combat pilot in the U.S. Armed Forces. She flew the AH-1W SuperCobra attack helicopter in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and eventually served two tours in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Fran Bera, was an American aviatrix and record setting pilot. She is the first woman to fly a helicopter with no tail rotor.

Evelyne Binsack is a Swiss mountaineer, international mountain guide UIAGM, adventurer, helicopter pilot and book author.

Alan Edgar Bristow, founded one of the world's largest helicopter service companies, Bristow Helicopters Ltd, which prospered primarily in the international oil and mineral exploration and extraction industries, but also spread into search and rescue, peacekeeping and other fields.

Olamide Brown, née Orekunrin, is a British-Nigerian medical doctor, healthcare entrepreneur and founder of the Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Group and Director Greentree Investment Company.

Peter Thomas Button was a pioneering rescue helicopter pilot in Wellington, New Zealand.

Charles, Prince of Wales is the heir apparent to the British throne as the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II. He has been heir apparent as well as Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay since 1952, and he is the oldest and longest-serving heir apparent in British history. He is also the longest-serving Prince of Wales, having held that title since July 1958.

Cristóbal Colón de Carvajal y Gorosábel, 18th Duke of Veragua, 17th Duke of la Vega, 19th Marquess of Aguilafuente, 16th Marquess of Jamaica, 20th Admiral of the Ocean Sea, GE, OIC is a Spanish nobleman, businessman and formerly an officer, helicopter pilot, and commander of a naval vessel in the Spanish Navy. He is a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus by way of Christopher's son, Diego. From Diego, Colón de Carvajal also holds the Duchy of Veragua since 1986. As the Duchy corresponds to the present-day Veraguas Province of the independent republic of Panama, Colón de Carvajal maintains close connections with Panamanian society, and serves on the advisory board of Petaquilla Minerals, a mining company.

Wing Commander John Reginald Dowling, was a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer and helicopter pilot famous for placing the spire of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral on 22 April 1962. He was a Lancaster bomber pilot during the Second World War, and the author of RAF Helicopters: The First Twenty Years, a comprehensive overview of the RAF's early helicopters and their uses.

Michel Drucker, CQ is a popular French journalist and TV host. He has been on screen for so long and so permanently, that he once said that some people consider that he was included in the price of their TV sets.

Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor, film director, composer, and producer. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s, and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. His accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three César Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award.

Neall Ellis is a South African military aviator and mercenary. Raised in Bulawayo, he joined the South African Air Force after a brief stint in the Rhodesian Army. As a helicopter pilot he was awarded the Honoris Crux decoration in 1983, and later attained field rank. After retiring from the SAAF he contracted for various private military corporations, including Executive Outcomes and Sandline International. During the civil war in Sierra Leone, he and his crew held off Revolutionary United Front (RUF) forces almost single-handedly. He also provided fire support for British troops during Operation Barras.

Kenneth James Gray was an American businessman and politician. He was a veteran of World War II, and represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives from 1955 to 1974, and again from 1985 to 1989.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is a member of the British royal family. As the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales, he is sixth in the line of succession to the British throne.

Sir Richard John Hayes is a New Zealand helicopter pilot. With over 30,000 flying hours, he is among New Zealand's most experienced pilots. He is the CEO of Southern Lakes Helicopters, a helicopter transport provider based in Fiordland.

Mary Jennings Hegar is an American United States Air Force veteran and former political candidate. In 2012, she sued the U.S. Air Force to remove the Combat Exclusion Policy. In 2017, she published the memoir Shoot Like a Girl, which describes her service in Afghanistan.

La'Shanda R. Holmes is a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard and the first African-American female helicopter pilot for the Coast Guard. She grew up in the foster care system and put herself through Spelman College. She was an Aircraft Commander at Air Station Los Angeles, Air Station Atlantic City, and Air Station Miami. She has amassed over 2,000 flight hours conducting search and rescue, counter drug, law enforcement, and Presidential air-intercept missions. She was appointed as a White House Fellow in 2015 by President Barack Obama. In 2015–2016 she was the Special Assistant to the NASA Administrator General Charles F. Bolden.

Desiree Tyler Horton, nicknamed "Chopper Chick," is a helicopter pilot and television personality based in Los Angeles, California. She is one of the few female helicopter pilots/on-camera reporters in Los Angeles television history.

Robert Karjel is a Swedish writer of literary thrillers. He was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, and lives in Stockholm. A helicopter pilot, he is a Lt. Colonel in the Swedish Air Force and the only Swedish pilot who has trained with the U.S. Marines.

Gaurav Keerthi is a Brigadier General in the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) who is also a TV personality and author in Singapore and is the founder of dialectic.sg, an online commenting platform based in Singapore.

Ahmad Keshvari was an AH-1J SeaCobra pilot in the Army Aviation (Havanirooz) of Iran. He had a role in the early months of the Iran-Iraq War to stop Iraqi tanks from further advancing into the western Iranian territories.

John Kelvin Koelsch was a United States Navy officer and a recipient of America's highest military decoration — the Medal of Honor — for his actions in the Korean War. He was the first helicopter pilot to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Sunthorn Kongsompong was the de facto head of government of Thailand from 1991 to 1992, after a military coup d'etat led by Sunthorn and General Suchinda Kraprayoon deposed the government of Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan on February 23, 1991. The generals accused Chatichai of corruption, and established the National Peacekeeping Council (NPKC) as an interim administration, with Sunthorn as chairman.

Lorenzo Fernando Lamas is an American actor. He is best known for his role of Lance Cumson, the irresponsible grandson of Angela Channing—played by Jane Wyman—in the soap opera Falcon Crest (1981–1990), for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

Wendy Barrien Lawrence is a retired United States Navy Captain, former helicopter pilot, an engineer, and a former NASA astronaut. She was the first female graduate of the United States Naval Academy to fly into space and she has also visited the Russian Space Station Mir. She was a mission specialist on STS-114, the first Space Shuttle flight after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She is married to Cathy Watson.

Air Vice Marshal Graham Brian Lintott, is a retired senior commander in the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) and former Chief of Air Force. He is now the Managing Director of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin's New Zealand operation.

Air Vice-Marshal Christopher James Luck, is a British charity executive and retired Royal Air Force officer. He was Commandant of the Royal Air Force College Cranwell from 2013 to 2016, and Commandant of the Joint Services Command and Staff College from 2017 to 2019. Since 2019, he has been CEO of the Shaw Trust.

Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell is a British socialite, known for her association with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She worked for her father, the publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, until his death in 1991, when she moved to the United States and became a close associate of Epstein. Maxwell founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans, The TerraMar Project, in 2012. The organisation announced cessation of operations on 12 July 2019, a week after the sex trafficking charges brought by New York federal prosecutors against Epstein became public.

Richard Hugh McCaw is a retired New Zealand professional rugby union player. He captained the national team, the All Blacks, in 110 out of his 148 test matches, and won two Rugby World Cups. He has won the World Rugby player of the year award a joint record three times and was the most capped test rugby player of all time from August 2015 to October 2020.

Anne Charlotte McClain is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, engineer and a NASA astronaut. Her call sign, "Annimal", dates back to her bruising rugby days; she also uses the call sign in her Twitter handle, AstroAnnimal. She was a Flight Engineer for Expedition 58/59 to the International Space Station.

Mykola Mykolayovych Melnyk, also known as Nikolai Melnik, was a Soviet-Ukrainian pilot and liquidator hero renowned for his high-risk helicopter mission on the dangerously-radioactive Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant building immediately after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Rustam Nurgaliyevich Minnikhanov is a Russian politician who has served as the second President of Tatarstan, a federal subject of Russia, since 2010.

Jasmin Moghbeli is an Iranian American U.S. Marine Corps test pilot and NASA astronaut. She is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Naval Postgraduate School, and Naval Test Pilot School, and as of 2019, has accumulated over 2,000 hours of flight time and flown in 150 combat missions, including sorties in Afghanistan.

Latifa Nabizada is an Afghan helicopter pilot in the Afghan Air Force. She is one of the first two women pilots to serve in Afghanistan that were qualified to fly a Mi-17 helicopter. By 2013, she was a colonel in the new Afghan Air Force. Nabizada's own career in the Afghan military has inspired other women to join.

Air Marshal Sir Barry Mark "Baz" North, is a senior Royal Air Force officer, who served as Deputy Commander (Personnel) at RAF Air Command. A helicopter pilot, North has held command appointments at all levels, notably No. 78 Squadron in the Falkland Islands, the Special Forces Flight as a squadron leader and the newly established No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group in the Middle East as an air commodore.

Rafael "Rafi" Peretz is an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and politician. A former military officer and helicopter pilot who also served as the Chief Military Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, he was the leader of the Jewish Home party. Peretz was a member of the Knesset for the Yamina alliance until he separated from the faction in order to join the Netanyahu-led government.

Pi Woo-jin is a first generation female helicopter pilot of South Korean Army previously served as President Moon Jae-in's first Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs of South Korea from 2017 to 2019. She is the first woman to lead this ministry.

Stephen Wesley Pless was a major in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. He earned the Medal of Honor as a UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" helicopter pilot for rescuing soldiers trapped by heavy enemy fire.

Ruslan Polovinko was a Ukrainian–Azerbaijani helicopter pilot and lieutenant, who participated in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War within Azerbaijani military. For his actions in the war he was posthumously awarded the title of the National Hero of Azerbaijan.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Douglas Pulford, is a retired senior Royal Air Force (RAF) commander. A helicopter pilot with operational service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands War and Iraq War, Pulford commanded RAF Odiham and No. 2 Group, and served as Assistant Chief of Defence Staff Operations, before taking up the post of Deputy Commander-in-Chief Personnel at Air Command and Air Member for Personnel in 2010. He became Chief of the Air Staff on 31 July 2013, retiring from the Royal Air Force on 12 July 2016.

Alan David Purwin was an American helicopter pilot, aerial film operator, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Purwin founded and owned Helinet Aviation. Purwin contributed to the aerial cinematography industry and aided in the filming of hundreds of Hollywood movies such as Pearl Harbor, Pirates of the Caribbean film series and the Transformers film series.

Hanna Reitsch was a German aviator and test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors.

Terry London Rinehart is an American airline pilot. When she was hired by Western Airlines in 1976, she was the first woman pilot to fly for them and one of 10 women working as airline pilots in the United States.

Francisco Carlos "Frank" Rubio is a US Army helicopter pilot, flight surgeon, and NASA astronaut.

Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill is an American politician, former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, attorney, and former federal prosecutor serving as the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 11th congressional district since 2019. The district includes a swath of suburban and exurban areas west of New York City. A member of the Democratic Party, Sherrill was elected on November 6, 2018, defeating Republican Jay Webber. She was reelected in 2020 by a slightly narrower margin.

Geneviève Simard is a Canadian alpine skier. She has appeared in two Winter Olympics, in 2002 and 2006. She is now a world-famous helicopter pilot featured in Hélico tous terrains, a Quebec TV show about a bush helicopter pilot working in Quebec's north coast.

Ralph H. Spanjer was a major general in the United States Marine Corps. He went on to serve as superintendent of the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas, and president of St. John's Northwestern Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin.

Colonel Merryl Tengesdal is the first and only African American woman to fly the United States Air Force's U-2 spy plane which is used for specialized high-altitude reconnaissance missions.

Harold E. "Tommy" Thompson of Hobart, Indiana, was a helicopter aviation pioneer. He was the first man to intentionally loop a helicopter, set three international helicopter speed records, and was the first man to land a helicopter in the courtyard of The Pentagon. Thompson was a veteran of 3,500 hours in single-engine propeller fixed-wing aircraft and 3000 more in helicopters.

Air Marshal Andrew Mark Turner, is a senior Royal Air Force officer and helicopter pilot.

Dimitris Ververelis, also known as D.T. Ververelis, is a Greek helicopter pilot nicknamed "The Wizard." He is the first Greek helicopter pilot to perform a televised full loop with a helicopter.

Jan-Michael Vincent was an American actor. He was best known for having played helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke on the television series Airwolf (1984–1987) and the protagonist, Matt Johnson, in the 1978 film Big Wednesday. He also starred as Byron Henry in The Winds of War.

Randy Waldman is an American pianist, arranger, composer, and conductor. In 2019, Waldman's arrangement of the "Spiderman Theme" on his Superheroes album garnered the Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals at the 61st Grammy Awards. Waldman also co-arranged Barbra Streisand's "Somewhere", which was awarded with an arrangement Grammy in 1985. He has served as Streisand's pianist and conductor for over 35 years and has worked with numerous artists including Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder. He is also a helicopter and airplane pilot and instructor and holds a 2003 flight speed record in a Bell OH-58 helicopter.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, is a member of the British royal family. He is the elder son of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Diana, Princess of Wales. Since birth, he has been second in the line of succession to the British throne.

Sarah, Duchess of York is a member of the extended British royal family. She is a writer, film producer and television personality. She is the former wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, the third child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Perry Henry Young Jr. was an American aviator who helped train pilots during World War II and became the first African American pilot for a regularly scheduled airline in the United States.

Admiral Sir George Michael Zambellas, is a retired Royal Navy officer. He was the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from April 2013 until he handed over duties to Admiral Sir Philip Jones in April 2016.