JIM RICKLEFS HAI’s first president and one of the first commercial helicopter operators.


Born on Mar. 9, 1914, in Monticello, Iowa, James Ricklefs learned to fly airplanes in 1933 while studying at Stanford University in California. After graduating, he spent a couple of years working for an investment firm before attending West Coast University in Southern California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronau- tical engineering. Te experience, he said in an interview with HAI in 2007, “basi- cally started me on my career in aviation.” After working as an engineer and teacher, Ricklefs


became the VP of Landgraf Helicopter Co. in 1944. Soon after his first solo helicopter flight in 1947, he left Landgraf and purchased a pair of Bell 47s and founded Rick Helicopters. He also went on to establish Alaska Helicopters. At one point during the early 1950s, Rick Helicopters


was one of the largest commercial operators of helicop- ters in the world. Te company’s fleet of 40 helicopters was bigger than those of the US Navy, US Marine Corps, and US Air Force—only the US Army fleet was larger. Ricklefs’s companies helped establish many opera-


tional standards for helicopters, including pilot proto- cols, cold-weather maintenance procedures, how to work with sling-load technology, and flight safety. It was


only natural, then, that Ricklefs would be 1 of 16 operators who, on Dec. 13, 1948, met at the offices of AF Helicopters in Burbank, California, to form a helicopter association for the collective benefit of the vertical aviation industry. Te group initially chose the name of


Helicopter Council but changed it the fol- lowing year to the California Helicopter Association, and then, in 1951, to the Helicopter Association of America


(HAA). Ricklefs served as the first president of the orga- nization that today is known as HAI. When asked about the group he helped form,


Ricklefs marveled at how far the association had come over the years. “At our organizational meeting in Los Angeles, there were [about] 12 of us around the table, and so it always boggles my mind when I come to one of the HAI annual meetings and see something like 17,000 people there,” he told HAI in 2007. Ricklefs was also an avid restorer of classic


aircraft—both fixed- and rotary-wing. Among those he restored were a Sikorsky R-4B, Sikorsky R-6As, Hiller ROE Rotorcycles, several Fairchild fixed-wing aircraft, and two World War I–era aircraft. Ricklefs died on Nov. 11, 2015, at the age of 101.


Rick Helicopters and Alaska Helicopters Bell 47s | Photo Courtesy Jim Ricklefs 140ROTOR SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE


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