Bristow Brand Guidelines: A 1955 Founder’s Name, the Tigers & the 2020 Era Merger

A test pilot, a Shell contract and the Persian Gulf.

Bristow began in June 1955, when Alan Bristow, a former Fleet Air Arm pilot who had been Westland’s first helicopter test pilot, set up Bristow Helicopters Ltd after winning a contract to supply helicopter crews to Shell for rigs in the Persian Gulf, according to English Wikipedia. The company’s own history tells the same start: a Shell contract in 1955 to carry crews and materials to Gulf rigs. In 1957 a contract with BP let it buy its first two aircraft, a pair of Westland Widgeons, and it took on work in Iran and Bolivia the same year.

Growth came through oil exploration. In 1960 Bristow bought Fison-Airwork, a crop-spraying company, mainly for its Shell work in Nigeria, and then dropped the crop spraying. The company says it was incorporated in Nigeria in 1969 and flew there for Shell, Mobil, Texaco and others. In the North Sea it was the second operator at Aberdeen after BEA Helicopters, Wikipedia says, flying Westland Wessex 60s from February 1965; the company dates its Aberdeen start to 1967. From 1972 it sent Sikorsky S-61Ns to Sumburgh in Shetland for Shell, and by the 1980s, Wikipedia says, Bristow was Aberdeen Airport’s largest single employer.

Training and rescue contracts followed. From 1961 Bristow trained Royal Navy helicopter pilots at Redhill in Surrey, later adding training contracts in India, Australia and New Zealand. In 1971 it began civilian search-and-rescue flying with Sikorsky S-55s at RAF Manston in Kent, which the company describes as the first time a private company provided search and rescue for the UK government. From 1983 it ran coastguard bases at Stornoway, Sumburgh, Lee-on-Solent and Portland for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, under a contract that lasted until 2007.

Tigers, buy-outs and Offshore Logistics.

The 1980s shaped the fleet. Bristow says it put four Sikorsky S-76s into service at Aberdeen, becoming the first European operator to fly the type commercially, and in 1982 it ordered 35 Aérospatiale Super Pumas, which it renamed “Tigers” for its own fleet; Wikipedia says Bristow consulted with Aérospatiale on shaping the design for the oil-and-gas market. The Tigers flew in the North Sea for three decades until the company retired them in 2014, the same year it says it introduced the Leonardo AW189 as a standard transport type.

Ownership changed repeatedly. Wikipedia records that British and Commonwealth Holdings acquired the company in 1985, the year Alan Bristow stepped down from running it; a management buy-out took it into the Bricom Group in 1988; the Scandinavian investment company Rochfield bought Bricom in July 1990; and another management buy-out followed in 1991.

The American chapter began in 1996, when Offshore Logistics, a Louisiana operator that had flown in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska as Air Logistics, took over Bristow Helicopters. The company says Offshore Logistics bought a 49 percent stake that year; Wikipedia describes the deal as a purchase structured as a reverse takeover. Offshore Logistics had started in Louisiana in 1969 with boats before switching to helicopters to rotate rig crews, Bristow says. In 2005 it moved its headquarters from Lafayette to Houston, and in February 2006 it renamed itself Bristow Group Inc. In January 2010, Wikipedia says, the Air Logistics name was retired and the Gulf of Mexico operation took the Bristow brand.

The group widened its range in the 2010s. Bristow says Bristow Helicopters Australia took a majority stake in the regional airline Airnorth of Darwin in 2015, a holding its website now gives as 100 percent, and that in April 2015 it began the UK government search-and-rescue contract it had won in 2013. Wikipedia says Bristow flies Leonardo AW139 and AW189 and Sikorsky S-92 helicopters on that contract.

How offshore operators present themselves.

Offshore helicopter operators sell a narrow service: moving crews and cargo between airports and installations at sea, and standing by for search and rescue. Their websites tend to follow the same plan. Bristow divides its work into offshore energy services, search and rescue, government services and advanced air mobility; CHC lists offshore transportation, search and rescue, emergency medical services, utility work and maintenance.

Colour carries much of the identity. Liveries vary from operator to operator, from navy to red and orange, and some choices carry history: when CHC came out of Chapter 11 in 2017 it changed its company colours to the orange of Okanagan Helicopters, one of its founding companies, Vertical reported. The photographs the companies publish tend to show helicopters over open sea or on helidecks, next to fleet pages arranged by type, from the Sikorsky S-92 to the Airbus H175 and the Leonardo AW139 and AW189.

Base maps are another constant. In the North Sea they run from Aberdeen, Norwich and Humberside to Stavanger and Den Helder; other networks reach the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil’s Santos Basin, West Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia. Contract news fills the press pages: crew-change deals with energy companies, coastguard search-and-rescue contracts such as those in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands, and maintenance work, which CHC sells under its Heli-One name.

Many of these operators have also been reshaped by restructurings and mergers. CHC filed for Chapter 11 in 2016, Bristow’s US entities followed in 2019, and Bristow merged with Era Group in 2020, so investor pages, quarterly results and ticker symbols sit alongside the helicopters. This guide sets out what can be checked about each operator — who founded it, who owns it and where it flies — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Two operators under one name since 2020.

On 11 May 2019 Bristow’s United States entities filed for Chapter 11 protection, Wikipedia says, while its overseas operations carried on as normal. The next step was a merger with Era Group. The two companies announced their plan on 24 January 2020, and the US antitrust waiting period expired on 10 April 2020, Vertical reported that month; the combined company was to be known as Bristow, with a fleet of more than 300 aircraft. The combination was completed on 12 June 2020, according to Bristow’s announcement, and the merged Bristow Group began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker VTOL, keeping its headquarters in Houston. Bristow’s history page now tells two founding stories side by side: Alan Bristow’s in 1955, and Carl Brady’s Economy Helicopters in Alaska in 1948.

Government work has grown since. In August 2022 Bristow completed its purchase of British International Helicopter Services, whose name and branding Wikipedia says are being replaced by Bristow’s, adding support and search-and-rescue flying from RAF Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands. That year it also began a ten-year search-and-rescue contract for the Netherlands Coastguard on 4 November 2022, and in July 2022 it won the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s ten-year second-generation search-and-rescue contract, with the handover from the earlier contracts running from September 2024 to the end of 2026, the company says. In May 2023 Vertical reported that Bristow’s Irish subsidiary had been chosen as preferred bidder for the next Irish Coast Guard contract, ahead of the incumbent, CHC Ireland; Bristow now lists Ireland among its areas of service.

Today Bristow lists operations across Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe, from Nigeria, Brazil and Suriname to Norway, the Netherlands and the Falklands, and says it holds a 40 percent economic interest in Cougar Helicopters of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Its website calls its vision, mission and values a “Brand Promise,” tagged #ProudToBeBristow, and its investor pages carry the filings and results it publishes as a listed company.

For a design guide, Bristow shows how one founder’s surname became the umbrella name for a merged group with two histories. Compare Era Group, the Alaska-born operator it merged with in 2020, and Cougar Helicopters, the Canadian operator in which it holds a stake. For this guide we use a deep navy, a deck grey and a flare orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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