Jonathan Burke is taking the helm as Blackcomb Helicopters’ new president and accountable executive, parent company The McLean Group announced in a release on June 1.
It seems like a natural fit.
Though he’s spent much of the last 25 years in boardrooms, Burke worked as a commercial helicopter pilot for years before entering the corporate world, eventually earning an MBA from Athabasca University and pursuing postgraduate studies at both The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University.
“As a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut, but I settled for something a little closer to terra firma,” he said with a laugh. “I love flying. I’ve always been fascinated by helicopters—they’re a crazy collection of mechanical bits that do wonderful things.”
But more than a comfortable fit, Burke’s new gig is a familiar one. He rejoins the company after previously serving as Blackcomb Aviation’s president and COO from 2013 to 2016.
Presented with “the opportunity to come back to my original passion and to work with the McLeans, and to work in the most beautiful place on the planet … how can you say no?” Burke explained in a phone interview on June 5.
In the release, Blackcomb Helicopters chair and McLean Group CEO Jason McLean said Burke “has unparalleled strategic insight and a depth of industry experience, in addition to operating with our shared values of safety, sustainability and doing things right.”
Now tasked with overseeing the company’s operations and growth strategy in B.C. and Alberta, Burke will need to lean on that insight and experience to help Blackcomb Helicopters navigate an array of challenges.
Burke’s hiring comes after several years of fast-paced growth for the B.C.-based flight operator, which began operating in Whistler in 1989.
Blackcomb Helicopters launched AlpX Expeditions one year ago, a new arm of the company dedicated solely to backcountry adventure-tourism offerings like heli-biking and heli-skiing. The move was complemented by Blackcomb Helicopters’ 2022 acquisition of Tyax Adventures and the opening of its purpose-built alpine trail network.
Alongside Blackcomb Helicopters’ other tourist-focused services like wedding elopements, mountaintop picnics and heli-hiking, the company also strengthened its existing commitment to utility, search-and-rescue, and firefighting flight operations by acquiring Calgary-based Elbow River Helicopters in 2022.
Today, the company counts about 20 helicopters and 60 aviation professionals spread out over six main bases across Western Canada, according to its website.
“We’re everywhere and anywhere, and it’s a very, very interesting time for the industry,” said Burke.
The economic “tables have been turned” on helicopter businesses in recent years, Burke said. Operators like Blackcomb Helicopters have seen massive, double-digit increases in the cost of purchasing, maintaining and flying aircrafts, “combined with some very significant restrictions that have been put on us by Transport Canada, that basically have had to change how we operate the business,” he explained.
New Transport Canada regulations impacting response capabilities
Historically, Blackcomb Helicopters would have at least one helicopter and one pilot stationed at each of its Sea to Sky bases, 365 days per year. “There was enough industrial and tourist activity going on in the Sea to Sky corridor to support those aircraft,” Burke explained.
Now, with less work to go around locally and more requests for service elsewhere—whether in the Arctic, Alberta or in Northern B.C., fighting forest fires and conducting powerline work—“we’re having to send our aircraft to where the work is,” said Burke.
That means “there’s been times when we’re getting SAR [search-and-rescue] calls in the Sea to Sky corridor when we’ve not necessarily had a helicopter, for example, sitting in Squamish ready to do a rescue on the Chief or sitting in Whistler ready to do a rescue on Whistler Mountain,” said Burke. “It’s become a challenge for us.”
Compounding that challenge are new Transport Canada regulations that came into force in December 2022. As Whistler Search and Rescue president Brad Sills told Pique in March, tightened restrictions on helicopter pilots’ flight time and total flight duty periods have, in some cases, made it more difficult for local SAR crews to secure available pilots towards the end of the day.
Previous federal flight time regulations, last updated in 1996, limited solo helicopter pilots to 40 to 60 hours in any seven consecutive days, and 120 hours in any 30 consecutive days. New rules permit pilots to fly a maximum of eight hours in any 24 consecutive hours, and 112 hours in any 28 consecutive days.
When it comes to flight duty periods, the old rules allowed aerial workers and air taxi operators to remain on duty for up to 14 hours for from the time they report for a flight, or carry out any flight-adjacent responsibilities assigned by the operator. Now, regulations limit pilots to a maximum flight duty period of between nine and 13 hours, depending on what time their day started and how many sectors they’ve flown. (Except in the case of medical evacuation flights, where the maximum flight duty period remains unchanged at 14 hours in any 24 consecutive hours.)
“The amendments made to the regulations contribute to reducing flight crew member fatigue, which has been linked to accidents and incidents, in addition to allowing Canada to meet its international obligations in terms of best standards and recommended practices,” a spokesperson for Transport Canada explained in an emailed statement. The new prescribed flight and duty time limits “are based on the most recent scientific principles,” the spokesperson added.
The new regulations effectively mean Blackcomb Helicopters needs two pilots on duty in a single day, where one would have sufficed under previous rules.
Now, “if Squamish Search and Rescue calls them at 6:15 in the morning to go and do a rescue on the Chief, at between one and two o’clock in the afternoon, that pilot can’t fly anymore because he’s reached the end of his duty day,” Burke explained.
“That’s an example of the restrictions we’re up against now, where, you know, a pilot who would typically be at the base for the day is now effectively on duty for half the day, and we need to have a second pilot available for the other half of the day.”
Compounding those challenges are wider issues affecting a majority of Sea to Sky residents and businesses: a housing crisis and general labour shortage, plus, Burke added, “a lot more people in the backcountry doing risky things.”
Whistler SAR saw its annual call volume increase for the third consecutive year in 2023, bucking the provincial trend that saw all B.C. SAR calls drop by approximately one quarter since the first year of the pandemic.
Emergency Management BC covers helicopter operating costs when a pilot and aircraft are deployed to a SAR call, “but nobody pays us to sit there” waiting for that call to come in, said Burke.
Burke maintained Blackcomb Helicopters is passionate about working with local SAR crews, but said there are costs associated with staying on standby.
“If we have a choice between [responding to a forest fire] in Prince George, versus sitting on the ground in Squamish paying for the pilot, the aircraft maintenance engineer, the $4- or $5-million helicopter to sit there and not get paid for it, the choice gets pretty easy as the prices go up,” he said. “And now, all of a sudden, we need to have two pilots there.”
What about climate?
Less than one week into June, federal officials warned Canadians this year’s wildfire season is already on track to be the worst the country has ever seen.
Burke, on the same day that warning was issued, said about 75 per cent of Blackcomb Helicopters’ fleet and crew is currently fighting forest fires across Canada.
What happens when AlpX’s heli-biking trails open and Whistler’s summer tourism season gets into full swing next month?
“We always have helicopters at our Whistler base for our tours out of Whistler. When our heli-biking starts up later this year we anticipate having aircraft, but there does come a point in any wildfire season—it happened in the Okanagan a few years ago; it’s happened in other places, for example in Lillooet and Lytton a few years ago—where the province basically says ‘I don’t care if you have heli-bikers booked, we need your helicopter,’” Burke explained. “They effectively will commandeer the assets because they need them for saving structures, saving life and limb … and if that’s the case, we go.
“We’re going to protect citizens and their property in the Sea to Sky corridor before we take someone for a tour,” he added.
But with an expanded list of those tourism offerings, the company also faces the same dilemma plaguing Whistler’s tourism industry as a whole: how to balance an emissions-heavy business model with the need to protect the environment and locations that business depends on.
To that end, Blackcomb Helicopters has operated as a carbon-neutral company since 2019 by purchasing carbon offsets. The company also flies a “fairly young” fleet, said Burke, and is constantly keeping an eye out for new technologies, like lower-carbon fuel researchers are currently experimenting with.
For now, Blackcomb Helicopters remains focused on “reasonable growth,” said Burke.
As demand for adventure-tourism offerings in the Sea to Sky continues to rise post-pandemic, “we’re being as prudent as we can in terms of the capacity of these offerings, but definitely, that’s an area that we’re trying to grow our business,” he added. “We’re constantly looking at other avenues of expansion in that area, but within reason, knowing that the backcountry can only handle so big a bootprint."
