Gulf Helicopters Brand Guidelines: A 1970 BOAC Offshoot Owned by Qatar’s GIS Since 2008

A 1970 company set up for Qatar’s oil fields.

Gulf Helicopters began in 1970. Its parent, Gulf International Services (GIS), says the company was incorporated that year under the name Gulf Helicopters Limited, as a subsidiary of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. English Wikipedia gives a fuller account of the start: it says the business was set up in February 1973 as a joint venture of British Overseas Airways, British European Helicopters and Gulf Aviation Services, to provide helicopter services to the oil companies then developing offshore exploration and production.

The company’s own history page tells the story from the inside. It says Gulf Helicopters was founded in 1970 as a domestic aviation service provider, having seen an opening for helicopter work in the Gulf States, and that it began operating “in full swing” in 1973 from its first base in Doha. The purpose, the website says, was to serve Qatar’s oil and gas industry, and that industry remains its main customer.

Ownership then moved around the region. GIS says the company was next acquired by Gulf Air; Wikipedia dates that purchase to March 1977 and names the buyer as Gulf Aviation Company Ltd. In 1998 the state-owned Qatar General Petroleum Corporation, now QatarEnergy, bought it outright, according to both the company and GIS; Wikipedia gives the month as June.

A decade later came the structure that holds it today. GIS says it was incorporated by QatarEnergy on 12 February 2008 as a holding company, taking over QatarEnergy’s interests in Gulf Helicopters, the drilling contractor Gulf Drilling International and the insurer Al Koot, and that QatarEnergy listed 70 percent of the new company’s shares on the Qatar Exchange on 26 May 2008. Gulf Helicopters has been a wholly owned GIS subsidiary since then.

AW139s, AW189s and a Doha heliport.

Gulf Helicopters describes itself as an operator of more than 50 helicopters, and its parent’s company page gives a fleet of 59. The types the company lists include the Leonardo AW139 and AW189, the Sikorsky S-92, the Bell 412 and Bell 212, the MD 902 and the AS350. English Wikipedia, citing the company’s fleet pages, gave a November 2022 count that included 30 AW139s, five AW189s and two S-92s.

The AW189 arrived in 2014. In a release dated 23 September 2014, GIS announced the delivery of the first two AW189s in offshore configuration to Gulf Helicopters, with fifteen on order and the whole batch due by 2017. The same release said the company had become an AgustaWestland authorised training centre for the AW139 and AW189 in September 2013, and had ordered an AW189 full flight simulator in February 2014.

The work is mostly energy work. GIS describes the core business as offshore and onshore transport, long- and short-line load lifting, seismic support, VIP executive transport and short-term contracts, with simulator training, spare parts and third-party maintenance alongside. GIS also says that, within Qatar, the company is the sole provider of helicopter transportation services. On its own website Gulf Helicopters adds emergency medical services, flown with AW139s and night-vision goggles, as well as tourist flights, aerial photography and banner flying.

Some of that work faces the public. The website says Samana Helicopter Tours, aerial sightseeing over Doha, is run by Gulf Helicopters with Qatar Tourism Authority and Regency Travel & Tours, taking off from the Doha Heliport at the company’s head office. The company also runs separate websites for its MRO business and its training academy, and GIS lists its approvals: an air operator certificate from the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, recognition as a repair station by the US Federal Aviation Administration, and recognition as a maintenance organisation by the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Qatari authority.

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.

From Doha to Libya, Morocco and Malaysia.

Gulf Helicopters has spent decades working outside Qatar. Its history page lists current and past operations in countries including Germany, Denmark, Malta, Libya, Sudan, South Africa, Oman, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Timor-Leste, and its affiliates page names bases in Doha, Saudi Arabia, India, Libya, Turkey and Malta. The affiliates it lists include Al Maha in Libya, through which, GIS says, the company is registered with the Libyan civil aviation authority, as well as RedStar Aviation, United Helicharters in India and Air Ocean Maroc.

The Moroccan stake is documented. On 15 April 2019 The Peninsula reported a GIS filing to the Qatar Stock Exchange saying Gulf Helicopters had bought 49 percent of Air Ocean Maroc, a Moroccan aviation and medical-evacuation company, as part of a move into North-West Africa and southern Europe. Other GIS releases record leasing work: from 1 July 2013, Malaysia’s Weststar Aviation Services contracted two Gulf Helicopters AW139s for petroleum operations in Malaysia, for one year with an option on a second.

The group’s fortunes follow Qatar’s energy industry. GIS, whose largest shareholder is QatarEnergy, has since published quarterly results for the periods to March, June and September 2026.

The website’s own presentation is plain: a rotating banner reading “Your Global Aviation Partner,” fleet pages organised by aircraft type, and a notice warning the public about fraudsters impersonating the company.

For a design guide, Gulf Helicopters shows a state-linked operator defined by its ownership line, its fleet types and its approvals. Compare Weststar Aviation, which leased its AW139s in 2013, and Bristow. For this guide we use maroon, navy and sand with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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