EXECUTIVE WATCH Howard Hadley


CEO/Owner Main Line Helicopter LLC (Helicopter Handler) By Rick Weatherford


But what’s with all these interruptions? Does Hadley consider our interview an intrusion? Is he attempting to avoid personal details that might fill in the brushstrokes of his portrait?


Howard Hadley apologizes again — and yet again. During our interview, we’ve been repeatedly interrupted by others needing an answer from Hadley, who cofounded Main Line Helicopter LLC with his late wife Sherry. Main Line sounds mainstream, but you probably don’t associate the name with its mega-selling specialty product: Helicopter Handler, a sturdy steel-based platform specifically built to securely roll helicopters to, from and around hangars. (Full disclosure: Helicopter Handler is one of the longest-running regular advertisers in this publication, but that has no effect on this profile — except to put this writer on notice not to be too favorably biased.)


As these questions begin to coalesce into a cloud of suspicion, the little cloud bursts with a thundering realization: Hadley isn’t hiding. These intrusions are showing who he really is: an open-door open book. He’s letting us see a not-so-secret active ingredient in his successful, varied career. “I’m very much a believer that the person at the top must have an open-door policy,” he resumes. “I


believe in being extremely inclusive.


I’ve always tried to manage businesses as if we’re a family. When you’re in a top executive position like CEO or COO, you still have tough decisions to make, but it’s very helpful when those decisions start at the bottom and rise up. I don’t like top-down management with no input from below. I didn’t even like it when I was in law enforcement, which is usually structured in a top-down way. A lot of small-business owners lose sight of the fact they wouldn’t be where they are if it weren’t for the people that work for them. People are a business’ greatest asset.”


I’m thunderstruck — and somewhat shamed for my unfounded suspicion — by this


unassuming, inclusive leader who


speaks simple truth at a comfortable, confident pace that comes from having lived and learned. (He didn’t rush through our questions; he generously gave us over an hour of answers and insights.)


Wait, what was that he said about being a cop?


Tulsa Police


Surprisingly, for a small-business owner who now sells Helicopter Handlers, Hadley began his career as a patrol officer on the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police force with a fresh associate’s degree in criminal justice he earned with the help of a law enforcement education assistance grant


from


Northwestern Oklahoma State University in 1972. Actually, he was nudged into this career path by his farming dad, Bob, who didn’t want his four children to depend on the whims of agriculture as the family had when Hadley was growing up on their 17,000-acre West Kansas working farm and cattle/sheep ranch. “It was probably for the best, because each of us has done well,” Hadley surmises.


Still, back then he didn’t know exactly what he’d gotten into in Tulsa. The police department borrowed a Hughes helicopter and started up an air unit in 1981. Two weeks later the helicopter crashed, killing its two officers onboard. Hadley was now the only manager left on the force with flying experience. (In college, he’d worked at the Alva Municipal Airport and earned his personal fixed-wing license on the side. Roughly half a century later, he’s now accumulated approximately 4,000 flight hours in fixed-wing and 3,000 hours in helicopters.) Shortly after that fatal crash, Hadley’s superiors asked their only pilot in management to resurrect the air unit. Hadley recalls, “My first action was to hire a retired chief helicopter pilot from Kansas City’s police department. Then, we spent 90-120 days doing nothing but training with our department’s pilots.”


14 Nov/Dec 2023


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