Over the Top

She’s a wisp of a woman with a calm manner and a wicked smile. She owns a leading tourism business, operating five helicopters, and every day is an adventure for the legendary Choppy Patterson.

Words: Kate Coughlan  Photographs: Mark Smith

WAS IT IN THE GENES? Was it a gift from a fond uncle? The downturn in bungy jumping after a Fijian coup? Or the toss of a coin that ended her potential career as a hydroponic lettuce farmer? Whatever forces propel 40-year-old Louisa Patterson, she is firmly at the controls of a high-end tourism operation in Queenstown employing eight staff  and with a multi-million-dollar annual turnover.

There are certainly a lot of flying genes in this aviatrix. Her father and uncle flew during the Second World War: her father Pat piloting Spitfires, her uncle Doug flying Wellington bombers. Her father, who had returned to New Zealand after the war and established an aluminium manufacturing company, was killed when a light aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed. Louisa was nine.

Her uncle Doug, who had also returned to New Zealand after the war, joined the National Airways Corporation. When Louisa was a teenager Doug Patterson, by then chairman of NAC, gave her a subscription to the NAC Flying Club and ignited her passion for aviation. “I was so excited about flying that I didn’t spend too much time at Victoria University where I was doing a degree in marine biology. It took me 50 hours of waitressing at a restaurant called the Gravy Train to pay for one hour’s tuition at the flying club. I loved it.”

Trying to pin down this woman into a straight narrative of her life is as hard as landing a Tiger Moth in a cross wind. She’s not particularly interested in talking about herself so she laughs, jokes, teases and tells stories. And boy, does she have stories.

Yes, she flew Fijian rebel leader Colonel Sitiveni Rambuka during his first coup attempt, ducking under cover among the palm trees from village to village. No, she didn’t think it was particularly dangerous. Probably not as dangerous as being a top-dressing pilot operating Fletcher aircraft in the Rangitikei for several years. Not as dangerous as the fire-lighting work she has done for forestry companies. Not as dangerous as fire-fighting or rescues. Not nearly as dangerous as the goat recovery work she was doing in the 1980s.

Has she ever done boring routine work? Well, actually, yes. Flying Fokker Friendships for Air New Zealand. “That was very dull indeed: so controlled, no room for personality in that job. I quite liked walking through the airport terminal in my pilot’s uniform though.” She didn’t stay in that pedestrian role for long as Air New Zealand retrenched and made Louisa redundant.

But she was pleased to have had the work. Prior to joining Air New Zealand she had been flying her own helicopter in Auckland, taking wealthy people on indulgent outings. After the share market crashed in October 1987, she found fewer people wanting to hop down to Huka Lodge for lunch or out to Waiheke Island for a pre-dinner Bloody Mary.

Louisa Patterson (aka Choppy): firmly at the
controls of her Queenstown tourism operation.

After redundancy, this very experienced fixed-wing and helicopter pilot completed a three-month hydroponics course at the Tauranga polytechnic. Why? You may well ask. “I had worked for some years in Fiji doing all sorts of flying – construction (and learned the hard way that concrete buckets are bottom emptying and don’t need to be tipped over sideways), and seismic surveying where I learned to land on a ship’s tiny platform in rolling seas.” Yes, but what has this to do with hydroponics in Tauranga? “Getting lettuces in Fiji in those days was almost impossible and I had this idea that you could grow salad greens hydroponically. We could stick them in tunnels to protect them from the cyclones and supply all the hotels in Fiji. 

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