ALAN BRISTOWOBE was a successful British businessman best known for founding Bristow Helicopters.
Mr Bristow died on 26 April, 2009, aged 85.
His airline was said to have run helicopters in every country in the world outside the Soviet bloc and was particularly noted for its offshore operations, aiding the oil industry and search and rescue teams.
Alan Edgar Bristow was born on 3 September 1923, in Balham, South London, but grew up in Bermuda where his father ran a naval dockyard. He went to grammar school in Portsmouth when his father got a similar position there.
Still a teenager he served with the Navy in the Second World War, seeing action off the European, African and Japanese coasts. In 1944 he joined the Fleet Air Arm to train as a pilot. He was one of the first Britons to fly the American Sikorsky R-4 helicopter.
After the war he was hired by Westland as a helicopter test pilot and then worked in France and several of its foreign territories. It was perilous work in the early days of helicopter flight and he experienced numerous engine failures and crashes – he once had to land on iceberg during a snowstorm when his rotor blade iced up.
After some early success selling helicopters to the French and Dutch, he founded Bristow Helicopters and moved into the oil business, co-operating with war hero Douglas Bader who was then working for Shell.
Mr Bristow was known for his gambling and the risks he took on North Sea gas and oil exploration in the 1960s paid dividends. As well as Bristow, he revived British United Airways in a three-year period. He was also known for innovations in land-based transport and agricultural machinery.
He was a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party and supplied helicopters for Margaret Thatcher’s election campaigns. In the 1980s he tried to buy out his former employers Westland Helicopters, but the deal fell apart when Mr Bristow uncovered a secret government loan, leading to the resignation of two Cabinet ministers.
He finally relinquished control of the company in the mid-90s, selling to Offshore Logistics. A decade later that company changed its name to The Bristow Group to capitalise on Mr Bristow’s renown in the world of industry.
Personally Mr Bristow was known to be impulsive and have a short temper, but was also known for his loyalty and generosity. He was survived by his wife, Heather, and a son from his first marriage. His first wife and a daughter from that marriage predeceased him.
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