Weststar Aviation Brand Guidelines: Malaysia’s 2003 Offshore Helicopter Operator & Its AW139s

An air operator certificate and a founder.

Weststar Aviation Services was set up in Malaysia in 2003. English Wikipedia says it was established in April that year, when the country’s Department of Civil Aviation approved its air operator certificate, and the company’s website now speaks of “over two decades” of helicopter work. Its founder and chairman is Tan Sri Syed Azman Syed Ibrahim, as Malay Mail described him in 2023 and as the company’s own releases name him; he is also group managing director of the Weststar Group, the parent company.

The parent is a diversified Malaysian business. Malay Mail described Weststar Group in March 2023 as having interests in aviation, automobiles, property and insurance. Wikipedia places the aviation company’s head office in the group’s tower in Ampang, Selangor, and its main base at Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang, with further bases at Kerteh, Kota Bharu, Kota Kinabalu and Miri. The company’s own news pages also mention teams at Kerteh, Kota Bharu and Kuching.

For part of its history the company had an outside investor. On 4 March 2023 Malay Mail reported that Weststar Group had become the sole shareholder of Weststar Aviation Services by buying the remaining 21 percent stake from the global investment firm KKR. In a statement the founder thanked KKR for its support “over the years,” a period in which, he said, the company had expanded internationally and served large energy clients; KKR, in turn, wished the Weststar team continued success.

AW139s offshore and for the air force.

Weststar’s core work is flying crews and equipment to offshore oil and gas installations. Its website lists offshore transportation alongside defence aviation, corporate VIP transport, medical evacuation, timber survey, powerline inspection and external sling-load work. In March 2023 Malay Mail gave its fleet as 34 helicopters, used mainly to carry personnel for major oil and gas companies to offshore production platforms and drilling rigs, and called it the largest helicopter operator in Malaysia and South-east Asia by fleet size; the New Straits Times used a similar description of its offshore work two months later.

The fleet is built around the Leonardo AW139. At the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition in May 2023, the New Straits Times reported, Weststar signed deals with Leonardo that included the purchase of five AW139s and a partnership agreement on the AW609 tiltrotor, and a memorandum of understanding with Petronas intended as a blueprint for adopting sustainable aviation fuel among Malaysia’s offshore helicopter operators. Wikipedia also lists an AW189 and an AS365 Dauphin in the current fleet.

Government work has grown alongside the offshore business. Weststar says it completed the delivery of four more AW139s to the Royal Malaysian Air Force in August 2025 under what it calls a “Government Operate, Company Own, and Maintain” model. The last of the four was handed over at the Kuching air force base on 5 August 2025, after deliveries in December 2024, January 2025 and June 2025; the company says the aircraft are used for medical evacuation, air logistics and disaster relief.

It has also leased aircraft in. A Gulf International Services release of 23 June 2013 says Weststar contracted two AW139s from Qatar’s Gulf Helicopters for its petroleum operations in Malaysia from 1 July 2013, for one year with an optional second year.

Offshore helicopter operators.

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.

Indonesia, Timor-Leste and a plan to grow.

Weststar works beyond Malaysia through affiliates. Its news pages name PT Weststar Aviation Indonesia and Weststar GAP Aviation in Timor-Leste, which took part in an energy, mining and business forum in Dili in November 2025. In Europe the company set up an Italian affiliate, Weststar NDD; in a release of 14 March 2023 Weststar said that Helicopter & Cooperation SAS, a joint venture of the Paris-based Avico Group and the African operator Westair Aviation, would take a controlling stake, with Weststar staying on as a partner.

Not every market has lasted. At a signing ceremony on 6 April 2026, reported by Free Malaysia Today from the news agency Bernama, the group managing director said the company had left its offshore transport work in Saudi Arabia late the previous year after about three years there, during which it had deployed two helicopters at Al-Khafji for offshore crew changes and medical evacuation.

That ceremony marked a syndicated financing facility arranged with AmBank Group, which Weststar says will fund fleet expansion, working capital and foreign-exchange needs. Its executive director said the company intended to grow its fleet from 32 to 64 aircraft within two years, and that its helicopters serve the offshore oil and gas sector, defence needs and emergency response. AmBank, for its part, says it has worked with Weststar for some 15 years.

The company’s website frames that mix with a corporate video, a section on where it operates, its client list and running totals of flight hours, with separate pages for corporate governance and sustainability and a news section of base events, staff profiles and contract announcements.

For a design guide, Weststar Aviation shows an operator presenting energy, defence and government work under one group name. Compare Gulf Helicopters, which leased it AW139s in 2013, and CHC. For this guide we use deep teal, ink and amber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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