#5: Johnny Rowlands

Johnny Rowlands is a veteran helicopter pilot and traffic reporter as well as Chief Pilot of KMBC’s News Chopper 9. He was a radio disc jockey in the mid-1970s, and started his television career on Channel 9 in the late ’70s as a co-host of the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. He captures spectacular video of some of Kansas City’s biggest storms and stories. He was a member of the original “First News” team in the late ’80s as Kansas City’s first television airborne traffic reporter, piloting his Cessna over the Kansas City morning rush hour. In 2003, he took over the controls of News Chopper 9 capturing the May 4th, 2003 tornado outbreak, the May 8, 2003 Lawrence, Kansas, and May 28th, 2019 Linwood, Kansas tornado.