The Helicopter Association International’s W.A. “Dub” Blessing Award for the Certified Flight Instructor of the Year recognizes superlative contributions by a helicopter flight instructor in upholding high standards of excellence. That description certainly applies to this year’s winner: Simon Spencer-Bower, the owner, operator, chief pilot and chief flying instructor for Wanaka Helicopters in Wanaka, New Zealand. With three decades of flight instruction and nearly 21,000 total flight hours, Spencer-Bower was also honored with the Queen’s Service Medal by the New Zealand government in 2010 for his contribution to safety in aviation. “I feel extraordinarily privileged to be awarded this award, and it’s nice to see that HAI is recognizing people from around the world,” Spencer-Bower told AIN. “I’m extremely honored and extremely excited about coming to Orlando to Heli-Expo and meeting everyone there.”
While growing up on a farm, Spencer-Bower was enthralled by the activities of the crop dusters, and as soon as he graduated from school he earned his fixed-wing pilot license in 1967 at the age of 18. He soon tackled his commercial certificate, before adding single- and multi-engine helicopter licenses in the late 1970s. “I think there were only two or three civilian instructors in the whole country, and I had a devil of a job getting an instructor to teach me to fly,” he recalled. “Then you only got about seven hours’ dual instruction, so because I was a fixed-wing pilot, after I soloed I just flew the helicopter around like an airplane and taught myself the rest, basically.”
While he did not intend to become an instructor, he realized that the dearth of civil helicopter training in the country presented an opportunity. “I figured that possibly there was an opening, as a number of people were asking me if they could learn to fly as well, so I eventually got my instructor ticket and it started from there.” In his 30 years as a training provider, Spencer-Bower has tallied 12,500 hours in helicopter dual instruction and estimates that he’s graduated approximately 600 pilots. “We’re not a large flight school, just six or eight employees,, and for a long period of time in the early days it was only me that was instructing, and it just gradually built up. So it’s not a huge number, but in the context of New Zealand helicopter schools, it’s the highest number of any operator in this country.” He is also a New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) flight examiner.
Today Wanaka Helicopters operates a fleet consisting of four Robinson R22s, three R44s and an Airbus AS350 AStar. With more than 15,000 flight hours in Robinson helicopters alone, Spencer-Bower is one of the company’s highest flight-hour operators in the world.
In terms of his training mindset, he looks to provide his students with more than the standard stick-and-pedal instruction. “When I learned to fly an airplane, I was taught that way, and when I became a private pilot I was totally unprepared for the real world,” he said. “I felt I’m not going to let that happen if I ever become an instructor.” Rather than simply inform students of when it might be too windy for them to fly, Spencer-Bower would prefer for such choices to be teachable moments. “My overall philosophy is to teach people to have good decision-making skills, so that puts them in good stead for the rest of their aviation career.”
One of his pet peeves over the current level of global training is the reliance on newly-minted instructors. “One thing I have learned is the older and wiser you get and the more experience you have, the easier it is to get students through their license, and I’m a great advocate of having experienced instructors in my organization,” he told AIN. “I think half the problem with a lot of organizations around the world is that instructing is the first job that a lot of pilots get straight out of their commercial tickets, and what happens is you get the blind leading the blind. Even if you do employ a junior instructor, you need to have a senior old wise owl at the top who can mentor them and pass on good information.”
Along with the ab-initio training his company provides, Spencer-Bower also developed a course that takes into account the island nation’s challenging topography. “Because New Zealand is covered with hills and mountains, one unique aspect of our license is that all candidates must do mountain flying as part of the coursework,” he explained. Even experienced high-hour pilots who had not flown in such situations could quickly find themselves in trouble. “We found that there are pilots coming in from overseas that had never flown in the mountains before,” he noted. “CAA were concerned that pilots would come operate commercially down in an area such as we have here amongst the mountains, they have no experience in this type of environment before, so they needed to attend a course so they could get up to standard.” Wanaka’s Advanced Helicopter Mountain Flying Course attracts approximately 20 customers a year and remains the only such program authorized by the CAA.
In addition to instruction, the company provides sightseeing flights over the region’s stunning landscape, which was home to many of the filming locations for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie trilogies. Other missions include transporting hunters, fishermen and skiers to their various remote destinations, all of which can also provide a benefit to students, according to Spencer-Bower. “One aspect of the flight school which is interesting for students is that they can see a commercial operation going on and they can sometimes help out,” he said. “It gives them a little bit of real-world experience.”