It was a bad weekend for helicopters and wires.

On Saturday, one person was killed and one injured when an R22 collided with a powerline at the Mataranka Rodeo Grounds, south-east of Katherine in the Northern Territory.

On the other side of the world, at almost exactly the same time, one of my very best friends flew his R44 into a cable temporarily suspended from the top of a drill rig. He walked away. The helicopter cremated itself.

Frankly, the coincidence is freaking me out a little. I had to double-check the times on timeanddate.com – which converts between international time zones – to verify that these accidents really did happen almost simultaneously.

I talked to my friend shortly after his wire strike. Not knowing how else to express my concern and relief, I joked around. (How do you joke about your friend crawling out through the broken windscreen of his helicopter before it bursts into flames? You just do.)

As I told him later, I guess I chalked up his survival to our ‘invulnerability’. Invulnerability is one of five ‘hazardous attitudes’ identified by the FAA, and I think every helicopter pilot needs a little of it to do his or her job. You can’t be an effective pilot if you spend too much time thinking about your mortality. “Of course he walked away,” was how I felt. “Of course we’re going to live forever.”

As the accident in the NT demonstrates: no, we’re not. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the pilot who was killed, because I know exactly how I would be feeling right now if I had gotten a different email on Saturday.