J. Lynn Helms, Who Led the F.A.A., Dies at 86 J. Lynn Helms, who as head of the Federal Aviation Administration supported President Ronald Reagan's decision to fire more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers and who subsequently helped restore the nation's crippled air traffic control system, died on Sunday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 86. The cause was cardiopulmonary failure after several bouts of pneumonia, said his daughter Carole Helms Reichhelm. Mr. Helms, a decorated pilot who left the Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel in 1956, went on to a successful business career in aviation. In 1974, he became president and chief executive of Piper Aircraft - he was later named chairman - and was widely credited with turning around the company's financial fortunes before Mr. Reagan appointed him to lead the F.A.A. Early in his tenure, Mr. Helms, whose title was administrator, declared his intention to keep the agency "out of the press as much as possible," though he hardly succeeded at that. When he assumed the post in April 1981, a confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, the union known as Patco, was imminent, and his first months on the job were spent preparing for a possible illegal strike. Mr. Helms negotiated a cooperation agreement with commercial airlines and helped secure assurance from the Pentagon that military air controllers would be available to step in. Federal law prohibited federal employees like the controllers to strike. But on Aug. 3, demanding higher pay and a shorter work week because of the high-stress nature of their profession, nearly 13,000 of them walked off the job anyway, and only about 10 percent returned to work after Mr. Reagan threatened with dismissal anyone who remained out after 48 hours. In the end, more than 11,000 controllers lost their jobs, and Patco was decertified. Air traffic was sharply curtailed, to a level that the government said the remaining controllers could manage. Nonetheless, Mr. Helms's contingency plans functioned better than expected, and with flight schedules pared down and supervisors, nonstriking controllers and military controllers staffing airport towers and radar centers, there were no strike-related disasters. Widely seen as an effective manager, Mr. Helms was able to oversee the restoration of air service nearly to prestrike levels by the time he left the agency in January 1984, though problems with air traffic delays continued, and 1985, the year after he left, was among the worst in airline history for accidents and deaths. Jonee Lynn Helms - he never used his first name - was born on March 1, 1925, in De Queen, Ark., near the Oklahoma border, where his father, Benjamin Franklin Helms, was a railroad worker, and his mother, Mamie Johnson, was a teacher. He attended the University of Oklahoma. Though he never graduated, he began his aviation career at Oklahoma, joining the Navy aviation cadet training program. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines. He was later a Navy test pilot and awarded both the Marine Corps Air Medal and the United States Air Force Air Medal with Oak-Leaf Cluster for Combat and Exceptional Service during the Korean War. In addition to his daughter Carole, Mr. Helms is survived by his wife, a former Miss Colorado, Lorraine Bisgard Helms, whom he married in 1947; a brother, Robert; another daughter, Loralyn Helms; a son, Zackary , and three grandchildren. A son, Jon L. Helms II, died in 1987. At the F.A.A., Mr. Helms headed the United States delegation to the United Nations emergency session after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean airliner with 269 people aboard in 1983. He also oversaw the development of the 1982 National Airspace System Plan, a 20-year scheme to revamp the air traffic control system in anticipation of an increase in air travel as the century came to an end. By 1991, however, the plan was no longer viable, though many of its projects were incorporated in a more comprehensive blueprint for the future of the agency as a whole. Mr. Helms left the F.A.A. in January 1984 under a cloud after The Wall Street Journal had examined his private business practices and concluded that he and a partner had engaged in shady ethical and possibly illegal behavior. They were later charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with diverting $1.2 million from an issue of tax-exempt municipal bonds to their personal use. Mr. Helms signed a consent order that settled the case, though he did not have to repay any money.