No and I'm somewhat of an expert on GTA-IV/EFLC yet have not had this issue. Like you I shot all fifty of the seagulls and the chopper spawned at the old house Brian used to use. I rode it without any issue. You can also get that chopper by talking to Clay and request the Innovation. Try that and see if the same thing happens.

Yeah, all choppers from Clay worked fine, so did the one spawning at house after finishing the story, but the Innovation at clubhouse crashed the game every single time even after I made this post. Weird.

Oh, man ... that has to be a undocumented glitch. I'm glad you got the chopper but man, they really need to address that.

Greetings from the future. Having this issue as well. In my case the game also crashes when I tried to go up the stairs to the 2nd floor of the clubhouse. I've searched everywhere and the only fix I've read is to start a new game. I also read the game can crash during the diamond deal mission but I haven't gotten that far yet to test it. This needs to get bumped or something because idk how to fix this and I'm doing a 100% run and I really don't wanna start over.