Renowned for flying the rich and famous, popular Queenstown aviator Louisa ‘Choppy’ Patterson’s just raised two big milestones.

Fifty years ago, on August 17, 1976, she first flew solo in a Wakatipu Aero Club Cessna 172.

Then, 40 years ago, on September 30, 1986, her high-end helicopter company, Over The Top, took its first clients for an on-mountain picnic out of Ohakune — the business re-established in Queenstown about three years later.

Louisa grew up in Wellington and the Wairarapa with aviation in her veins — her dad was a World War 2 Spitfire pilot, then an RAF test pilot (she was only 10 when he died while a passenger on a plane), and her uncle, who also flew in WW2, was National Airways Corporation’s (NAC) chairman.

She had a yearning to fly from a young age — “I recall lots of aeroplane books for Christmas presents”.

Her uncle signed her up for the NAC flying club, however she later took lessons at Queenstown’s aero club with Jim Jeffery, who’d take her to Fiordland’s Big Bay to pick up whitebait.

In Whanganui, she became smitten with choppers after a trainer introduced her to them — “that was like ‘wow’” — and she got her helicopter commercial first, then her fixed-wing wings.

Louisa initially did a lot of fixed-wing work, flying Fletchers for top-dressing work, then Fokker Friendships as first officer till they were withdrawn from service.

She also spread fertiliser from a Bell Jet Ranger and had a range of chopper jobs in Fiji including film and rescue work.

As for her nickname, merchant banker Sir Michael Fay called her ‘Chopper’ during the late-’80s America’s Cup in Western Australia. 

“I said, ‘I don’t know if I like that name, can we make it ‘Choppy?’ and it has since rather stuck.”

Moving to Queenstown in about ’89, Louisa pioneered heli-tourism — letting clients immerse themselves in remote spots rather than pilots keeping the blades running while they had a quick peek.

“This is the best heli-flying in the world, and the most memorable helicopter flying you’ve ever going to have is the 50 miles [80km] between Queenstown and the coast.”

The only problem being, she says, “183 days of the year we can’t get to Fiordland”.

Besides other options either east or south of Queenstown, Louisa’s also innovated — setting up, with a partner, a helicopter access-only golf hole on Cecil Peak, then buying New Zealand’s smallest high country station, also near Queenstown, also with helicopter-only access, which has an old gold mining cottage on it.

In 2007, she bought her first super-quiet, brand-new Eurocopter Airbus H130 — causing a bit of offence, the Airbus rep told her, “you’re the first one we have sold to the common man”.

She now has two more at $7 million a pop — “that’s the best for tourism from a scenic point of view”.

From early on, Louisa’s been environmentally-conscious, “so every time a helicopter goes up, we offset the emission from the Safran engine to conservation and give that back into tree-planting”.

In 2015, Louisa’s only child, James Patterson Gardner, was killed along with his pilot on a training flight in a Robinson 44 chopper which broke up mid-flight in Queenstown’s Lochy Valley — “just the worst tragedy you could imagine”.

“He would have been 30 in February, and he would have probably been back in Queenstown helping me with my business.”

In the aftermath, she found there’d been a horrific run of in-flight fatalities in Robinson 44s which continued.

“Robinson Helicopter Company have changed the design of their 44s and 66s and now have put another empennage on the tail so it stops the inadvertent rolling to the right and therefore the mass killings of unsuspecting young pilots.

“The sad thing, at the rate they’re producing these they’ve still got 17 years to go to replace them in the fleet.”

Meanwhile, Louisa developed a cockpit video recorder, Eye In The Sky — “we’re getting a lot of national and international recognition for this powerful little safety device”.

The Dunedin company producing it is now developing a “generation two”, she says.

She puts proceeds from the business into the James PG (Patterson Gardner) Foundation which funds training opportunities for aspiring helicopter pilots.

Another benefit of the device is it’s a training tool.

Louisa says when her hangar moves to the Queenstown airport’s northern precinct she’ll gift to the industry a chopper simulator to train NZ and Australian pilots, while visitors can also try it out.

It won’t be her only indoor attraction — in ’24 she bought indoor golf centre, Golf Federation.

“I just needed a place in town to put a couple of brochures up and [the original owner] said, ‘do you want to buy the business?’”

As for Over The Top’s future, she’s happy to keep on flying and running the business “as long as you’re currently fit and have your medicals and the cognitive band-width”.

As to whether she’d sell, “you never know”.

“We’re one of the largest tourism helicopter companies in NZ, we’ve got fabulous concessions, we’ve got fabulous plant, we’ve got fabulous staff.

“If there was a situation where an investor came and he was going to look after the crew, then of course we’d look at that.”

And as for what she’d do?

“I’d go and drive some beautiful classic car through Europe.”

  •  Additional research from Jacqui Thomas’ Her Way — Real Stories of New Zealand women succeeding in business and doing so with heart — copies from jacquithomas.com

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