It's 40 years this week since Bob Lindsay — one of the most respected figures in local aviation — came to Queenstown and joined what’s now The Helicopter Line.
As a chopper pilot, Bob, who turns 74 in February, logged about 15,000 hours before being seemingly unfairly grounded about 12 years ago.
He’s returned to the company, however, and happily ferries passengers to and from the airport.
Bob grew up on a family farm at Clinton, near Balclutha, and boarded at Dunedin’s John McGlashan College.
When he was 14 his folks moved to a larger farm around the Luggate airfield, near Wanaka, and that’s where he caught the flying bug.
"I got hooked on watching the helicopters."
They belonged to celebrated aviator, the late Sir Tim Wallis, who pioneered deer recovery and tourism aviation.
Though involved with farming after he left school, Bob would help weigh venison and refuel helicopters for Wallis, and he did short ground crew stints in Glenorchy and Hawea.
Farming wasn’t economic at the time, and Bob happily got into aviation instead.
Training in Nelson, he gained his private pilot’s licence in 1975, his fixed-wing commercial licence in ’78 and his helicopter licence in ’79.
On attaining the latter, his instructor said, ‘Bob, congratulations, but it’s a licence to learn’.
What he soon learnt was he couldn’t get a job in New Zealand till he got his hours up, so he went to Australia for two and a-half years, initially in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
For a year he worked for A&P Insurance, flying fixed-wing between 18 outback stations.
He then flew choppers in Western Australia.
Asked to fly a drunk worker back to the former Argyle Diamond Mine, the passenger threw a pillow that blew out the chopper’s tail rotor drive shaft, causing it to crash-land and Bob to break his sacrum.
Back in NZ he landed a job with Queenstown’s Alpine Helicopters, when it was changing to THL, in November ’84.
Over the next 28 years his roles included pilot manager for THL’s scenic division.
He also performed hundreds of rescues, sometimes in dodgy weather.
Only once did he fail to complete a job — involving a girl on the Routeburn Track who died after a big beech tree fell on the hut she was staying in.
A highlight was doing 75 hours’ chopper work ferrying cast and crew during a six-week shoot for the movie Willow in 1987.
Things got hairy after a crew vehicle couldn’t handle sheet ice on the Crown Range — he was called in but his chopper also skidded a tad.
Other highlights were ferrying prime ministers David Lange and Helen Clark, Irish President Mary McAleese, who gifted him a pen set, actor Sir Sam Neill and 1983 Miss Universe Lorraine Downes.
In the ’90s he flew a world-record 1356 chopper flights for AJ Hackett’s heli-bungy operation till it was closed down on alleged safety grounds, meaning no one will break his record.
Initially the jumps were over Coronet Peak, but as it was too cold with the door off they relocated to over Cecil Peak.
In all, Bob flew about 1500 hours in choppers — including about 8500 in single- and twin-engine Squirrels — and 1050 hours in fixed-wing craft.
In 2011, he says he was attending the Nelson A&P Show where someone selling spark guns — like a .45 Colt — ran one up the back of his head, causing serious muscle spasms.
Bob stood himself down for about two months before resuming flying for another year.
To his huge shock, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) then stood him down permanently, despite two MRI scans giving him the all-clear, and an Auckland psychologist after five minutes saying he was as sane as anyone, Bob says.
If there’s any karma, he reports a CAA auditor recently telling him he shouldn’t have been grounded, and the person who’d ordered it had been sacked himself.
Bob next worked for other employers then rejoined Mark Quickfall’s The Helicopter Line and Milford Sound Scenic Flights as ground crew.
Bob’s one of those people who are "always enthusiastic, always positive, absolutely reliable and loyal", Quickfall says.
The self-confessed people person says Queenstown’s been good to him and he and his wife Lorraine had proudly brought up four children who’ve in turn produced 10 grandchildren.
They were also lucky to get into Kelvin Heights before prices went crazy — Bob says they paid just $105,000 in ’85 for their first home.
