Prince Harry’s work as a British Army veteran and pilot will be honoured at this year’s 21st Annual Living Legends of Aviation Awards.
The decorated event – which will be hosted by John Travolta in Beverly Hills, California next Friday – will see the royal inducted alongside other aerospace icons including Fred George and Steve Hinton.
The Duke of Sussex, 39, undertook two tours of duty in Afghanistan as a forward air controller and an Apache helicopter pilot.
It is understood that his work with setting up the Invictus Games Foundation will also be celebrated, according to the awards’ website. It is not clear whether Harry, or his wife Meghan Markle, will attend the ceremony.
The event – produced by the Kiddie Hawk Air Academy – commemorates ‘remarkable people of extraordinary accomplishment in aviation’ – and the ‘Legends’ meet annually to honour new industry leaders.
Prince Harry ‘s work as a British Army veteran and pilot will be honoured at this year’s 21st Annual Living Legends of Aviation Awards. Pictured in 2012
Other 2024 inductees include Fred George, Steve Hinton and Marc Parent. The honourees are Mark Burns, Laurans A. Mendelson, Kyle Clark, Linden S. Blue, Lance Toland and Lauren Sánchez.
The event’s website also highlights Harry’s work as a ‘humanitarian, mental wellness advocate, and environmentalist’, touching on his work with Travalyst, Sentebale, African Parks, WellChild, BetterUp the Aspen Institute Commission on Information Disorder – and The Archewell Foundation.
It also praised the Duke’s ‘compassion, vulnerability, and unflinching honesty’ in his memoir Spare.
Early last year, Harry said his military career ‘saved him’ after the tragic death of his mother, Princess Diana, by helping him ‘turn his pain into purpose’.
The Duke served in the Army for a decade in total, rising to the rank of Captain and undertaking two tours of Afghanistan.
During the second tour, he spent four months as an Apache helicopter pilot – from September 2012 to January 2013.
In an explosive tell-all interview with 60 Minutes in 2023, the royal said the position was his ‘calling’.
‘My military career saved me in many regards,’ he told host Anderson Cooper. ‘It got me out of the spotlight from the UK press.
The decorated event – which will be hosted by John Travolta in Beverley Hills, California next Friday – will see the royal inducted alongside other aerospace icons including Fred George and Steve Hinton. Harry pictured in September
‘I was able to focus on a purpose larger than myself – to be wearing the same uniform as everybody else, to feel normal for the first time in my life, and accomplish some of the biggest challenges that I ever had.’
Harry explained that he ‘didn’t get a pass for being a prince,’ and that he had to work just as hard as everyone else.
‘There’s no prince autopilot button you can press and just wiff – takes you away,’ he joked.
The prince was first deployed to Helmand province as a forward air controller in 2007 after three years of training, but his first tour of duty was cut short when an Australian magazine broke a media embargo by mistake.
However, he returned in 2012 with the Ministry of Defence publicizing his second deployment on the understanding that the media would allow him to get on with the job at hand.
After he learned to fly Apache helicopters, Harry was deployed to Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan in 2012, where he stayed for 20 weeks.
During his 2012 tour, Harry helped provide helicopter support to the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces operating throughout Helmand province.
Based out of Camp Bastion, 662 Squadron Army Air Corps, to which he belonged, flew more than a hundred deliberate missions over 2,500 flying hours, providing surveillance, deterrence and, when required, close combat attack capabilities as well as escort duties for other aircraft.
The news comes as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are being ridiculed so much in Hollywood that it could put their rebrand in trouble, culture and royal experts told MailOnline today.
The couple were once again the butt of a joke on Sunday night when Golden Globes host Jo Koy roasted them in front of an audience of A-listers.
During the second tour, he spent four months as an Apache helicopter pilot – from September 2012 to January 2013. Pictured in 2012
The US comedian said the couple were being paid ‘millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing – and that’s just by Netflix’. The comment was met with huge laughs in the auditorium, including one from Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos.
Koy also prompted laughter when joking how Imelda Staunton’s portrayal of the Queen in The Crown ‘was so good Prince Harry called her and asked her for money’.
Netflix is one the couple’s main sources of income after they signed a multi-year deal worth $100million (£78million) with the streaming network in September 2020.
Their podcast deal with Spotify was axed after just one season of Meghan’s series Archetypes, with the firm’s executive Bill Simmons later labelling them ‘grifters.’
Sunday was the latest joke on US TV at the couple’s expense over the past year, including a South Park episode last February entitled ‘The Worldwide Privacy Tour’ which showed the couple on a publicity blitz to promote Harry’s book, ‘Waaagh’.
They were also the target of a cutaway sketch in Family Guy last October, when a butler gave Harry his ‘millions from Netflix for… no one knows what’ – before Meghan says: ‘Babe, time to do our daily $250,000 sponsored Instagram post for Del Taco.’ Harry responds: ‘I shouldn’t have left the made-up nonsense.’
At the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills on Sunday, Koy said: ‘Succession has nine nominations. Just a great series about a rich, white, dysfunctional family, all scheming – oh, wait, that’s The Crown. I’m sorry.
‘How great was Imelda Staunton in The Crown, wasn’t she amazing? Her portrayal of the Queen was so good Prince Harry called her and asked her for money.
‘Like I said, I didn’t write all of these. That one’s not mine.
‘Turns out Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will still get paid millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing. And that’s just by Netflix.’
The comment about asking for money comes after Harry told Oprah Winfrey during the couple’s bombshell interview in 2021 that his father, then Prince Charles but now King Charles III, ‘literally cut me off financially’ when they stepped down as senior royals one year earlier.
And the latest joke comes as some believe former Suits actress Meghan is currently assessing a potential second stage of her Hollywood career – although this is more likely to relate to production rather than acting this time.
Royal author Phil Dampier said today that the regular ridicule in the US was making life difficult for the California-based Sussexes – with Americans now left ‘fed up with their constant moaning’.
The news comes as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are being ridiculed so much in Hollywood that it could put their rebrand in trouble, culture and royal experts told MailOnline today. The couple pictured in September
The couple were once again the butt of a joke on Sunday night when Golden Globes host Jo Koy roasted them in front of an audience of A-listers
Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos is pictured at the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills on Sunday, where he laughed during a joke about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle by host Jo Koy
He told MailOnline: ‘A couple of years ago Harry and Meghan would not have been humiliated in this way but they are now the butt of jokes, even among the woke luvvies of Hollywood. When you become figures of ridicule you are in trouble.
‘When they first moved to America they were a popular couple but people have seen through them and are fed up with their constant moaning. This is the latest of a growing list of mickey takes out of them, following on from South Park and other shows.’
He told how the couple had ‘lost’ their Spotify contract and ‘run out of ideas at Netflix’, saying they are a ‘source of amusement even to the sort of left of centre audience who previously would have been sympathetic to them’.
Mr Dampier said the couple were ‘badly in need of a new direction in 2024 otherwise they could nosedive’ with their sources of income drying up amid their ‘huge running costs’ and security outlay.
He added: ‘They expect criticism from the press and social media, but attacks from the showbiz world show how far they have fallen.’
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