“Bring home leftovers,” he said to his wife, “and I’ll have them for dinner.”
Wearing a gray tracksuit, a baseball cap and sunglasses, Mr. Kim drove to Manassas Regional Airport, where he kept his plane, and flew 14 minutes to Culpeper Airport, where the rescue volunteers were assembling. By 3:31 p.m. he was airborne with the dogs, first taking an arced path to Harford County Airport, in Churchville, Md., to drop off a fourth dog, Money, whose rescue he had separately arranged.
After 22 minutes on the ground there, he set off again, at 4:43, toward Albany.
Some pilots were all business, but Mr. Kim liked to interact with his passengers, to talk to them and scratch them and take selfies with them. They were in close quarters, after all, inside a cabin roughly the size of a compact SUV.
Just west of Philadelphia, Mr. Kim heard his friend and fellow rescue pilot, Kley Parkhurst, on the radio speaking to air traffic control. Realizing they were within a couple miles or so of each other, the two men bantered for a few minutes from their respective cockpits before going their own ways.
Mr. Kim and Mr. Parkhurst, who each flew dozens of missions a year, frequently discussed the technical aspects of their hobby and, like all pilots, were aware of its hazards.
“There are pilots who won’t fly a single-engine plane, pilots who won’t fly at night, pilots who won’t fly over mountains, pilots who won’t fly in any kind of weather,” Mr. Parkhurst said.
