Chuck Aaron opens helicopter aerobatics flight school

Chuck Aaron, the former Red Bull Helicopter Pilot, is opening a helicopter aerobatics flight school near Charlotte, North Carolina, for any helicopter pilot who aspires to fly aerobatics. The flight school, called Chuck Aaron Aerobatics, is to be based at Concord-Padgett Regional Airport (JQF).

The school will offer an introduction to aerobatics course and will be available to helicopter pilots in any level of experience.

“We’re the only school where you can get helicopter aerobatic training,” Aaron told Vertical. “No one has ever offered to the public helicopter aerobatic training. . . . I’m offering it to any [helicopter] pilot who wants to go out and do a loop or a roll in a helicopter; they can come to me and I’ll make it happen.”

Aaron said students will learn and perform introductory demo flights with Aaron’s MBB Bo.105 helicopter, which is certified for aerobatics. He made proprietary modifications to the Bo.105 that allow the aircraft to perform maneuvers that were not previously possible for helicopters.

Red Bull owns two Bo.105s that were originally modified by Aaron, and Aaron has his own — which is to be used for the Chuck Aaron Aerobatics flight school. The Bo.105 will be stored in a hangar at JQF.

Around 20 helicopter pilots have already signed up for Aaron’s introductory aerobatics course. “I’ll show [the students] what aerobatics is like,” he said, “and if they want to take the next step and go to multiple hours of training, then I can do that, too.”

The introduction to aerobatics course will last roughly half a day; it will start in a classroom with a three- to four-hour safety briefing that explains “exactly what we’ll be doing, why we’re doing it, what maneuvers we’re going to do, how to do those maneuvers, what the helicopter is going through while it’s doing those maneuvers, and what to expect out of it — so we’re all on the same page before we go out and actually do it,” he said.

Aaron has been an aerobatic helicopter pilot since 2004, and is the first person to ever get a helicopter certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to perform aerobatics in a helicopter in the U.S.

He said with his years of background, he can “teach people who have always had that dream like I did… who have wanted to see what it’s like to do loops and rolls and Split S’s in a helicopter.”

Aaron told Vertical the flight school will likely be open in the next four to five weeks.