Robin Petgrave
Chief Pilot & President of: Celebrity Helicopters
Robin Petgrave is also the Founder of: Tomorrow's Aeronatical Museum Born to fly, Jamaican native, American raised Robin Petgrave has accumulated over 25,000 hours of flight experience gracing the skills conducting helicopter tours, charters, flight training, ferrying helicopters, and entertainment industry production work. A director and producer’s dream, Robin’s deft flying skills, uncanny sense of production timing, and a photographic eye for “the money shot”, gets better results than originally planned, saves on aerial sequence production costs, and makes the production crew and talent look great. Robin wowed a skeptical movie crew by landing a helicopter where no one thought possible-not once but eight times in Dr. Dre’s backyard during a movie shoot. He is impulsive, free-spirited, and a big kid at heart. And he can fly the hell out of almost anything. One of the only, if not the only African American helicopter pilots flying film, television, music video, and commercial production jobs in the entertainment industry, Petgrave (he prefers to be referred to as Robin) is steadily breaking down the diversity barriers.
So what is Robin up to when he’s not flying stuntmen around? Keeping an eye on his reinvention of the helicopter tour industry and mentoring economically deprived future aviators between the ages of 8-21. As a way of giving back, Robin donates most of the profits from Celebrity Helicopters to Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum (T.A.M), one of the only interactive aviation museums in the United States that offers hands-on involvement with its static displays, virtual reality aircraft simulators, and youth programs. T.A.M. is also endorsed & supported by L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn, Speaker of the California State Assembly Honorable Herb J. Wesson, Jr., Senator Debra Bowen, Congresswoman Juanita Millender McDonald, Councilman Bernard Parks, Sheriff Lee Baca, Compton’s Mayor Eric Perrodin, Compton Unified School District, Sergei Sikorsky, the Tuskegee Airmen, Power 106 & Knowledge Is Power Foundation, Home Depot, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and many individuals.
Because he loves flying so much, it is a gift he would like to give to potential pilots. T.A.M. is a non-profit organization that gives Robin the ability to realize this gift. The museum has established an Aviation Explorers program that encourages interest in the field of aviation by providing scholarships and allowing at-risk youth to learn responsibility and to care for the community by washing aircraft, airport upkeep, facility maintenance, setup computer labs at local schools, and volunteer for flight training credits. With the guidance and support from the Tuskegee Airmen Los Angeles Chapter, T.A.M. also provides a historical journey through aviation.