Not long after founding a fixed-wing agricultural spraying business in northern California, Phil Gunsauls decided to pursue his passion for rotorcraft. His grandson Seth Gunsauls is now the CEO and president of the company that business grew into. Based in Red Bluff in northern California, PJ Helicopters took the initials of Phil and his wife’s middle name, Jean. While the company now operate 33 rotorcraft across the United States, that wasn’t always the case.
“For a long time, the company name was ‘PJ’s Helicopter,’ ” Seth laughed. “Initially there was a lot of agricultural work, but where we really started to hit our stride was in the late ’70s with the Forest Service and Cal Fire — which at the time went by the name of CDF, California Department of Forestry.”
If the 1970s taught the company about firefighting, then the ’80s were all about law enforcement. These days, utility, forestry and construction are the three activities that Seth refers to as the company’s “bread and butter.”
“In the ’80s we did a lot with the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Drug Enforcement Administration,” Seth explained. “Building our short haul capabilities with these agencies kind of transitioned us into applying a lot of that to the utility side as well.”
Short haul — commonly referred to as human external cargo (HEC) — was developed as a means of inserting and extracting people amongst difficult terrain for law enforcement and rescue. It has proved just as effective at moving personnel into hard-to-access construction sites, and is a technique that PJ Helicopters has been involved with from the start.
“We pioneered a lot of that work with a state agency customer in 1986, and now we have over 35 years of doing that work and [are] trying to always do it a little bit better,” said Seth.
Doing things better is often as much about safety as it is capability. But when it comes to new techniques, the safety net of regulation won’t be enough to protect an operator’s reputation if they don’t have the mechanisms to balance innovation with caution.
“If you’re not prepared to manage that balance as well as possible, your staff or your customers may see some inauthenticity there,” explained Seth. “We try to co-educate the customers on what they’re exposed to, and we go deep into our training regimens and what we’re prepared to do to mitigate that.”
Better and bigger
The success of PJ Helicopters’ clients has in turn resulted in the operator developing a large and diverse fleet spanning several manufacturers. Early Bell 206s were joined by MD Helicopters 500 series aircraft, with the company still flying two MD 530Fs. Over time, the Bell fleet has been upgraded and expanded to 407s and twin-engine 429s.
Chief pilot Justin Chaffin explained that while the aircraft fill several roles, each type has its strengths.
“We’ve got 15 407s and it is definitely the light workhorse of PJ Helicopters,” he said. “It’s great for power line construction, great for HEC, and it’s a light helicopter that can lift a lot as well, so for the cost to operate it, you get a lot of bang for your buck.”
But the redundancy offered by operating a mixed fleet from more than one manufacturer must be measured against the additional workload involved with keeping up with the associated assortment of technical bulletins and Airworthiness Directives. To help meet these challenges, the company has been a part 145 repair station since 1996, and continues to develop its facilities to support its expanding fleet.
Seth explained that the fleet composition evolved as a result of customer demand — rather than specific business contingencies.
“In terms of the fleet makeup, it’s to match our customer needs and the way that the industry is going and try to provide a safer, more modern product if we can,” he said.
But modernization doesn’t always mean new aircraft. While customer need has driven PJ Helicopters’ fleet expansion, the company has maintained its position at the forefront of demand by designing and implementing its own unique equipment and modifications. And while it relies on partners to do the engineering and manufacture, the flight test can be taken care of in-house by Seth’s twin brother Kyle Gunsauls, who is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-approved Designated Engineering Representative (DER) flight test pilot.
“When you love aviation, there’s so many things to get excited about as we refine and tweak and test and improve,” said Seth. “We’re working on [HEC] side pole supplemental type certificates for both the MD 500 series and the Bell 407; different basket configurations for storage on fire and utility missions; and insulator washing kits on a number of different airframes.”
With the company operating 15 Bell 407s, the focus on that aircraft is understandable, but Seth explained that the MD 500 series is still a very relevant and much-loved utility machine.
“I don’t think you’ll ever see a day where PJ’s doesn’t have an MD product in in the barn,” he said. “But if you’ve got a customer that that wants to do a VIP flight today and then go lift 1,800-pound [815-kilogram] loads tomorrow, they’re going to get a 407.”
The move to the twin-engine Bell 429 represents a strategic decision by PJ Helicopters to position itself at the forefront of what it sees as a trend in the HEC mission.
Seth’s brother Justin Gunsauls is the company’s vice president and director of maintenance. He explained that the acquisition of Bell’s light twin was intended to position the company ahead of the competition.
“It is customer-driven, but it’s also us trying to get ahead of the curve, specifically on the twin-engine HEC,” he said. “We want to be innovators in that space.”
Twin-engine aircraft for HEC is not a requirement in the U.S. — as it is in many other countries — but PJ Helicopters believes that the cost is an investment in future capability.
“Usually, customers will gravitate towards it if it’s available, and that then kind of drives the market in that direction,” explained Justin.
But the extra engine also comes with compromises, one being that the line workers the aircraft transport are accustomed to smaller aircraft.
“They like to get in and out in lower rotor wash,” said Justin. “But we’ve gotten positive feedback specifically on some of the higher danger level stuff, like over-water or mid-span work.”
While the Bell 429’s Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS) isn’t a game-changer for the highly manual precision flying typical of utility tasks, the additional engine and the cabin room have the potential to bring new capabilities to existing mission sets.
“On the firefighting side, the whole industry is kind of pushing towards being able to operate at night,” explained Justin. “So obviously having two engines at night is a major safety increase. I think we’re just kind of starting to breach the surface on what it can do in the utility world.”
Worth the weight
The 429 is far from the largest twin-engine helicopter that PJ Helicopters has in its arsenal, though. The company started its Sikorsky UH-60 Utility Hawk program in 2015, and now has 12 of the type in operation. And in 2021, the company’s acquisition by Quanta Services allowed it to expand its heavy-lift capability with three Boeing CH-47D Chinooks. A utility company whose reach into large-scale construction work suits the unique lifting capacity of the Chinook, Quanta also benefits from having assured aircraft availability during the summer months when firefighting occupies the other aircraft.
“[The Chinooks] have been really exciting for the team,” said Seth Gunsauls. “They bring so much depth in terms of our redundancies and performance. The performance is astounding, and the safety profile is unmatched.”
The industry has been getting to grips with the Black Hawk in particular for nearly a decade now, since the U.S. Army began divesting itself of obsolete models. A generation ahead of the UH-1 that it replaced in military service, it is undeniably an excellent utility aircraft. However, its long-term upkeep is made more complex by the flood of complete airframes arriving at auction, exerting downward pressure on prices and encouraging short-term cost saving at the expense of fleet sustainment.
PJ Helicopters is tackling the issue head on.
“We’re transitioning a lot of our energy on the Hawk side to internal MRO [maintenance repair and overhaul], and building up the spares pool — in tandem with establishing really aggressive supply chain partnerships,” said Seth. “So, we’ve worked both angles of having market suppliers that understand we’re willing to pay market prices when needed, and … building our own stock as deep as possible on the spare side.”
This issue is less acute for the less common and more expensive Chinook, although one complication that affects both types is the conundrum of how to effectively crew them. Recruiting former military personnel with experience on type is an obvious-sounding solution, but while this addresses knowledge of the airframe, their broad general flying experience is less focused on the highly specialized long-line mission at which the aircraft excel.
The PJ Helicopters solution is to fly the aircraft with two qualified captains; one of which is an experienced pilot on type, while the other brings long line expertise.
“The winning combination with both the Black Hawk and the Chinook has been to draw upon some really great, highly qualified military folks, both in the maintenance and flight department, and pair them with captains that have been doing utility long line work for many years,” explained Seth. “When you have a type-rated pilot in each seat, we can go out and do extremely technical long-line missions and know that the skillset which that PIC [pilot in command] has with the long line is being paired with current type rated emergency procedure skills from the co-pilot.”
While their pool of experience in the utility mission is critical to the company’s success for now, it is far from guaranteed into the future. Again, a strategic view is necessary.
“There is a tightening of qualified labor within the utility pilot pool and that’s why we really try hard to focus on homegrown skillsets,” explained Seth. “We’ve gone back to the roots of just hire character and train skill. If you get somebody who every day is hungry to learn a bit more and be a little safer, that’s the character you want.”
People power
One of those characters is Sammy Challburg. She is a utility pilot who grew up seeing PJ Helicopters fly overhead, and now flies them.
“I got started in aviation when I was about 15, seeing PJ Helicopters fly around in my hometown,” she said. “I started to study and research how to get into aviation and actually came into PJs and asked around.”
After qualifying in Oregon, Challburg worked as an instructor before getting a scholarship to learn long lining, and then flew firefighting tasks with another company. With around 18 months’ experience, she’s back working at PJ Helicopters as a utility pilot on the Bell 407.
“The 407 is a great aircraft, especially for long lining, but I would love to get into the Hawk,” she said. “There’s a good route to get there, and you definitely have to put in your time and kind of get to know all the work that we do.”
New pilots like Challburg will be crucial if PJ Helicopters is to meet its goals, but despite the company having expanded from “PJ’s Helicopter” to 33 aircraft and a team of nearly 200, both Seth and Justin Gunsauls are clear that further growth is not itself an aim of the business.
“I would be fine if we stayed the same size or if there’s more growth in our future, as long as it’s all occurring for the right reasons and we can maintain a constant level of customer service,” Seth said. “Because you’ll be shrinking before you know it if you take your focus off customer service.”
Justin said: “Everything that you see is a by-product of putting in honest days’ work and treating people right. You’ve just got to keep doing what you do every day, stay humble and hard-working, and people gravitate towards that.”
