CHC Helicopter

Our customers want one consistent standard of safety and service around the globe. Our shareholders expect CHC to continue to create exceptional value. We will do both. Sealand is combined with Okanagan and Toronto Helicopters to form CHC; the company makes its initial public offering. CHC lists shares on the New York Stock Exchange; the company moves its headquarters to Vancouver. CHC Helicopter Corporation is the largest provider of helicopter support to the world's offshore oil industry. It operates in more than 30 countries and has a fleet of 160 helicopters. Its chief business is flying workers and supplies to offshore oilrigs. CHC also conducts air ambulance services and performs maintenance and overhaul work and flight training. CHC Helicopter Corporation was created in 1987 when three Canadian helicopter firms combined their operations. Craig Dobbin, owner of Sealand Helicopters Ltd., became the new firm's chief executive officer. A Newfoundland real estate developer, Dobbin had acquired a helicopter to take him to his remote fishing lodge (a place where Dobbin would entertain dignitaries such as U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney). He later told the Financial Post it cost CAD 85,000 to buy the helicopter and the same amount each year to operate it. Dobbin decided to hire the aircraft out, forming Sealand Helicopters Ltd. in December 1975. Sealand soon won a five-year contract to supply Newfoundland's air ambulance service. Mobil Oil Canada Ltd.'s exploration of the Hibernia oilfield provided another impetus for early growth. The fleet was expanded by a third to 38 aircraft. (Dobbin also formed an engineering firm to support the energy industry.) Dobbin began gathering helicopter companies to help Sealand survive through an industry downturn. In the early 1980s, Toronto Helicopters Ltd., which provided air ambulance and forestry-related services, was acquired in a leveraged buyout. Laden with debt, Dobbin then went after the industry leader. Vancouver's Okanagan Helicopters Ltd. had been founded in 1947 in the pioneering days of rotary wing flight. Once publicly traded, in 1982 the company was acquired by Calgary's Resource Service Group Ltd. Revenues were CAD 70.9 million in 1986, when operations stretched across Canada and as far abroad as Turkey and New Zealand. Okanagan had 561 employees and 125 helicopters before the merger. The combined operation had revenues of about $118 million a year. It had 162 aircraft, 230 pilots, and 750 employees altogether. Principal owners of the company included Dobbin and the United Kingdom's Bristow Helicopter Group Ltd., the world's largest commercial helicopter operator. Bristow had acquired a 49 percent holding in Okanagan a couple years earlier. CHC acquired two more firms in 1987, fuel distributor Aero Flight Holdings Ltd. and Offshore Helicopter Technologies Ltd., which was developing a flight simulator facility in St. John's. CHC's shares began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange in August of that year, raising CAD 44 million in the initial public offering (IPO). (This financed the Okanagan acquisition.) It was, noted the Financial Post, the market's last IPO before the crash of October 1987. CHC was Canada's largest helicopter firm and the third largest in the world, reported Toronto's Financial Post. CHC acquired Ranger Helicopters Canada, a geology specialist, in April 1988 for CAD 9.7 million. Ranger had briefly operated an airport shuttle in Toronto. Close rival Viking Helicopters Ltd. was taken over in April 1989. Viking operated a fleet of five dozen helicopters centered in Quebec. Annual revenues were about $20 million. CHC won a contract for United Nations peacekeeping flights in Kuwait, Cambodia, and Thailand in 1991, reported the Financial Post. This was, however, an unprofitable and difficult line of work. CHC acquired 40 percent of the voting shares of British International Helicopters Ltd. (BIH) in 1993. BIH