a background and love for aviation along with grit and determination. The decade also saw adventurers like Ross Perot Jr. and Dick Smith, visionaries like Frank Piasecki and outstanding aviators like Jean Boulet, who in the 1970s set the rotary-wing altitude record by taking a stripped down Aerospatiale SA315B Lama up to 40,820 ft (12,442 m).

Started by OPEC

Fueling the heyday of the early 1980s was the urgent pursuit of petroleum that followed the 1973 oil embargo by the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil companies scrambled to find the black brew everywhere — in the Rocky Mountain overthrust belt, off Alaska’s North Slope, near California and Canada’s maritime provinces, in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bering Sea.

The two oil sourcesharboring the most helicopter activity were the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. More helicopters flew in the Gulf. PHI alone had more than 700 helicopters at one time — more than any other operator, save the U.S. Army.

But the big iron was in the North Sea, and the biggest was the 44-passenger Boeing 234 Commercial Chinook. Its employment as a people-hauler was short-lived, but sensational. British Airways Helicopters was the initial Boeing 234 operator, flying six of the type. Three other offshore operators flew the tandem-rotor craft: Norway’s Helikopter Service, Alaska Helicopters and ERA Helicopters, the last two supporting offshore exploration in the Navarin Basin.

The workhorse in the North Sea was the venerable Sikorsky Aircraft S-61N, introduced in the early 1960s. The big question was what