He was He died Dec. Helms had a reputation as a decisive, technically brilliant aviation industry executive who led a number of companies out of financial straits, including Piper Aircraft, which he ran for six years.
A former test pilot, he was the first FAA chief in a decade capable of designing an airplane that could fly. After receiving assurances from Helms that a strike could be managed, Reagan declared the walkout illegal and warned that any workers who did not return to their jobs within 48 hours would be fired. The majority of controllers remained on strike and lost their jobs. According to Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin, who wrote a book about the strike, Helms was well suited to the challenge of standing up to the air controllers.
And he was instrumental in convincing President Reagan and other members of the administration that they could break a strike by highly skilled air traffic controllers, even if it took firing and permanently replacing large numbers of them. PATCO was decertified by the government two months after the strike began. The Reagan administration allowed only a fraction of the striking air controllers to be rehired. It was described at the time as the largest civil aviation project ever undertaken by the federal government.
Born on March 1, , in DeQueen, Ark. He later became a Navy test pilot and was decorated for his service during the Korean War.
He once told an interviewer how a jet he was testing for McDonnell Douglas went out of control at 52, feet. He did not panic and by 12, feet had figured out what to do. In , he embarked on a career in the defense industry as a design engineer. In , he was named president of Piper Aircraft, rising to chairman in A multimillionaire, Helms became the subject of federal investigations into his private business dealings in That year, the Wall Street Journal reported that two federal grand juries were examining questionable transfers of assets, frequent bankruptcies and defaults on money loaned or guaranteed by government agencies.
