Bristow buy brings company back to training
Bristow Group president and CEO Bill Chiles announced that his company will buy helicopter flight training outfit Helicopter Adventures for $15 million plu

Bristow Group president and CEO Bill Chiles announced that his company will buy helicopter flight training outfit Helicopter Adventures for $15 million plus debt (approximately $5 million) on April 1. After completing the purchase, Helicopter Adventures will be renamed Bristow Academy.

Bristow Group, which operates helicopters for the offshore energy industry, will need 850 to 950 new pilots in the next five years, according to Chiles. The Helicopter Adventures acquisition will help Bristow create a global training division that will likely open facilities in many of the countries where Bristow currently operates helicopters. At the same time it will help to alleviate the pilot shortage in the helicopter industry. “We’ve been talking about the pilot shortage,” Chiles said, “but we really weren’t doing anything about it.”