Yorkshire Helicopters is based at Leeds East Airport. This enviable rural setting is the perfect venue to learn the skills of helicopter flying in a relaxed and friendly environment. Away from the drab, old school flying clubs and large & intimidating international airports, Leeds East Airport is a hub of aviation activity and is ever evolving.
Our Ethos.
“We want to move away from the old and outdated military approach to flying. Our relaxed teaching style and focus on enjoying and embracing the challenges and successes that helicopter flying offers is rapidly growing us a following of friends who are happy to recommend Yorkshire Helicopters.
We take pride in everything we do (including making you smile). We ensure our helicopters are well kept and maintained to the highest of standards, we are committed to our clients, here to facilitate your flying ambitions and offer advice (we are all still learning).
Choosing the right helicopter training environment, both for your early qualifications and ongoing development, is vitally important. To find out if Yorkshire Helicopters will be a good fit for your pilot training, feel free to contact us at any time.”
Oliver Nicholls – Instructor & Examiner
Oli first began his career as a helicopter flying instructor at a busy Leicester based school. He moved to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands to challenge himself in a completely different flying environment with the unusual job of flying with filmmakers and photographers.
On returning to Yorkshire, Oli continues teaching helicopter flying and flies helicopters professionally all over the UK.
As his experience of the helicopter training environment grew, he realised that there was a growing demand for a helicopter flight training environment with none of the prevention, stress and complication that large operations based at international airports can sometimes project.
Favourite Flying Experience – “It is hard to choose, but when I worked in Gran Canaria we had to fly about 100 nautical miles to land on a boat to drop some boxes of disposal gloves and other PPE. We plugged in the GPS Coordinates and set off. Thankfully the boat was where it was supposed to be!”
Josh Heselden – Instructor
Josh passed his Commercial Pilots Licence under the instruction of Oli before becoming an Instructor under the guidance of industry leading Captain Geoff Day.
Josh’s relaxed and fun nature makes him a perfect fit into the Yorkshire Helicopters team.
Favourite Flying Experience – “Probably when we flew to Le Touquet in France, it was a bit last minute so after planning it out we set off and were in France for lunchtime. We hired push bikes and rode into town for lunch and were back home for tea. That’s when I realised the benefits of helicopter flying, how else would you ever do that.”
