On the morning of Thursday, March 6, 2003, Jeff Bezos chartered an Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopter in the remote reaches of southwest Texas. He knew the mountainous area from his teenage years, when he spent summers at his grandfather’s ranch: At the Lazy G, he castrated and branded cattle, worked on a Caterpillar tractor, and laid pipes. Now he was interested in buying his own ranch. The chopper flew near Cathedral Mountain, a monumental pile of eroded rock rising sharply from the high plains to a peak of 6,860 feet. The stony soil below was covered by dense forests of live oak, Douglas fir, aspen, maple, ponderosa pine, madrone, Arizona cypress, and juniper. Bezos rode with his executive assistant, Elizabeth Korrell, as the chopper was piloted by a local legend, Charles “Cheater” Bella. The veteran airman had flown in Rambo III, and survived a crash into New Mexico’s Organ Mountains. He’d even been hijacked in 1988, when a woman aimed a gun at him and forced him to land in the New Mexico State Penitentiary to break out her inmate husband.
That morning in March 2003, while carrying the richest and arguably most renowned passenger of his long career, Cheater nearly lost control of the copter in the powerful winds. He brought it to a quick landing, but the main rotor sliced into a cedar tree. The airframe split, and the helicopter rolled over and finally settled in the shallow waters of Calamity Creek. The copter was destroyed, but its passengers used their cell phones to call for help, and the U.S. Border Patrol sent a rescue party.
One year later, back at Amazon.com’s headquarters in Seattle, Bezos shows no sign of the minor head laceration he was hospitalized for — and no emotional trauma either. “People say that your life races before your eyes,” he says. “This particular accident happened slowly enough that we had a few seconds to contemplate it.” He lets out one of his famously booming laughs. Bezos’s laugh is like a streak of exclamation points. He laughs much the way a businessman from an earlier era might have slapped your back or pounded the table. But it’s a backslap that would break three of your ribs, and a table-pounding that might chop a wooden desk in half like a bravura karate stunt.
“I have to say, nothing extremely profound flashed through my head in those few seconds. My main thought was, This is such a silly way to die.” He laughs and laughs and laughs. “It wasn’t life-changing in any major way. I’ve learned a fairly tactical lesson from it, I’m afraid. The biggest takeaway is: Avoid helicopters whenever possible! They’re not as reliable as fixed-wing aircraft.” Then he laughs hysterically, as though his brush with death were the funniest thing imaginable.
