LOS ANGELES – Alan Purwin picked up his taste for flying early.
When he was 5, he would perch on a stack of pillows in his father’s Cessna so he could see past the instrument panel as the plane rose over the San Fernando Valley. When he was 16, he received his pilot’s license. A couple of years later, he was a crop-duster in Indiana.
When he came back to Los Angeles and started flying for film studios, his aeronautical career took off in earnest.
Purwin, who staged heart-stopping helicopter chases for the movies and flew life-saving missions for critically ill children, died Sept. 11 in Colombia in the crash of a small plane being used to transport crews for the Tom Cruise movie “Mena.” He was 54.
He was in Colombia helping to shoot the film.