Our mission at R&WI is to be the business resource for managers of rotorcraft operations around the world. This is not new; for nearly 50 years we have strived to serve this industry’s business intelligence needs.

In that pursuit, we long have benefitted from the counsel of forward-thinking leaders. To better serve our readers, we are formalizing that counsel with an Editorial Advisory Board. Members of this board will guide R&WI in presenting print and online content and events aimed at helping readers conduct effective, efficient and safe operations. The inaugural members offer us a broad range of operational, business and regulatory perspectives and experience, as you will see in the brief biographies that follow.

Jeanette Eaton, Regional Sales Executive, U.S. & Canada Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Company

Eaton has 28 years of industry experience — 20 with Sikorsky, bookended around an executive position at Bell Helicopter. She began at Sikorsky as an engineer and most recently led its Global Business, responsible for sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, Canada, China, Norway, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. In these regions, she was responsible for sales, delivery, and aftermarket support and services across all Sikorsky platforms.

An accomplished commercial helicopter and commercial instrument fixed-wing pilot, she is an advocate to youth, especially girls, considering careers in aviation. She also is a leader of Women in Aviation International. Her career highlights include selection to attend the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School.

Tony Fazio, President, Fazio Group International

Fazio has spent more than 32 years in varied aviation safety and international assignments. He served five years as the FAA’s director of Accident Investigation and Prevention.

During his U.S. government career, he represented U.S. aviation interests to foreign governments, international bodies, Congress and the International Civil Aviation Org.

Today, as a consultant, he assists and advises the international community in those areas as well as in governmental strategies in the international arena, regulation and certification, data collection programs and analysis, safety management systems, accident investigation process and program/manual review.

Kenneth Pyatt, Founder and President, SKY Helicopters

Pyatt’s company is a four-time winner of Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing private companies.

SKY Helicopters runs two North Texas public heliports; provides Robinson Helicopter sales and service, Part 141 flight instruction and Part 135 commercial operations and performs ENG flights for TV stations around the U.S.

A 1980 Bradley University graduate with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, he completed graduate work in finance and marketing at Southern Methodist University. A commercial rotorcraft pilot with more than 8,500 hr, he is a member of the AOPA Foundation President’s Council, HAI, the Experimental Aircraft Assn. and the North Central Texas Council of Governments Air Transportation Advisory Committee.

Ed Stockhausen, Director of Safety, Metro Aviation

Stockhausen was appointed Metro’s director of safety in January. In 1977, he started as a crew chief and load master for the U.S. Army Parachute Team, The Golden Knights.

He spent the last few decades in a variety of leadership roles and contributing to the safety of the helicopter industry as a whole. As VP of safety for Air Methods for 10 years, he was instrumental in achieving Level IV of the FAA’s Safety Management System Pilot Project for both Part 135 and Part 145.

Well known in the air medical and safety communities, he served as chairman of the Air Medical Operators Assn.’s safety committee and a member of HAI’s safety committee. At Metro, Stockhausen oversees initiatives at its completion center in Shreveport, Louisiana, and at its 34 bases across the U.S.

Steve Townes, Founder and CEO, Ranger Aerospace

Townes is an engineering graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He served in the 1st Ranger Battalion as a young Army officer.

Townes founded Ranger Aerospace in 1997. Since then, the company has employed thousands in a successful series of private equity consolidation platforms, including Aircraft Service International Group and Keystone Helicopter. In 2016, his firm acquired another consolidation platform company — a global manufacturer and lessor of air cargo-related products with operations in most of the world’s top 50 air cargo hubs.

He is the inaugural chairman for SC Aerospace, a South Carolinian industry cluster uniting hundreds of aerospace companies with government agencies and academia.

Ed Washecka, Founder and CEO, Waypoint Leasing

Washecka spent more than 20 years in the offshore oil and gas and helicopter industries Prior to Waypoint (the world’s largest helicopter leasing company, with leasing expertise in more than 20 countries), he was CEO of Era Group Inc., formerly the helicopter subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings.

For more than a decade, Washecka built SEACOR’s initial, small seed investment in helicopters to more than $710 million in assets through organic growth and acquisition. Era’s 800-plus employees operated and supported more than 175 helicopters in major markets.

He also pioneered Era Leasing, which grew to encompass more than 45 medium and heavy helicopters leased to operators in more than a dozen countries worldwide.

He is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia Business School.

Alex Youngs, VP Strategy & Analysis, Vector Aerospace

Appointed to his post in March 2013, Youngs provides strategy, sales and marketing leadership to this industry-leading provider of maintenance, repair and overhaul aviation services. He joined Vector from Airbus Helicopters in Marignane, France, where he was head of marketing intelligence.

He previously had served six years as senior director of marketing with Airbus in Grand Prairie, Texas.

Prior to that, in 1999, Youngs was business development director with Rolls-Royce Corp. in Indianapolis; he originally joined Rolls-Royce’s Defence Aerospace strategy team in Bristol, U.K., in 1995.

He was appointed a chartered marketer in 2000 and a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 2008.

New Board Helped Shape Tech Summit

Among their first undertakings, the inaugural members of R&WI’s Editorial Advisory Board guided development of our Sept. 19 to 20 Rotorcraft Technology Summit in Fort Worth, Texas.

Drawing on their diverse experience in aviation and business, the board members highlighted a number of topics for inclusion in the day-and-a-half summit’s program. These included the growing importance of “data mining” to both operations and safety and the near-term impact of technology on operations, such as the focus on on-condition maintenance for engines.

You can learn more about the Rotorcraft Technology Summit and its program at www.rotorcraftsummit.com. Registration for the event is open now. R&WI