Neighbours of the Kennedy Space Centre

Georgina Hunter-Jones

Helicopter Life visited Titusville, home of the former Helicopter Adventures Inc. now the Bristow Academy.

In 1998, Bristow Helicopters gave up training students and closed their Redhill, UK school, sending instead all their students to be trained in Concorde, California at HAI (Helicopter Adventures Inc) a helicopter school run by two Irishmen Patrick Corr and Cornelius Byrne, which advertised in the UK as doing CAA Commercial Pilot Licences (these became JAA CPLs in 2000). However, in March this year at the HeliExpo in Florida the Bristow Group announced they were buying Helicopter Adventures Inc for 15 million dollars  (plus debt) while keeping Patrick Corr as VP in charge of Training. The irony is there but few people are actually asking why, since for most people the answer is already clear: The helicopter industry has changed immensely since 1998; expectation in the helicopter field is much higher; and clearly Bristows now see the need for returning to in-house training.

Patrick Corr, the driving force behind HAI, spent six years in the Irish Army where, he says, “I learnt about discipline, leadership and organisation.” Something he later brought to his teaching career. During this period there were a couple of times when he was given the opportunity to learn to fly, but for various reasons did not do it. Then, after six years in the army, he felt he had “gained the lions share of the benefit that the military can give to a civilian,” and he opted to leave the army and go into personnel and administration, starting with a job in Saudi Arabia. Here he also met his wife, Nancy, a US citizen who was working as a nurse...