Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Buying a Helicopter Tourism Business?! Here's What We Think

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

In this episode, the hosts dive into a high-flying tourism aviation business for sale in the Southeast, featuring helicopters, helipads, and hefty margins—with a healthy side of legal intrigue and risk.------------------------------------------------------------------► Join 40,000+ business minds who read my newsletter: http://bit.ly/SmallBusinessMBA► Deep dives on businesses for sale: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast  ► Follow me on Twitter/X: https://x.com/girdley------------------------------------------------------------------🎯 Sponsors:🔍 Acquisition Lab – Founded by Harvard MBA Walker Deibel, Acquisition Lab is your fast track to small business acquisition success. Schedule your free consultation today: https://www.acquisitionlab.com/ and tell them Acquanon sent you!🛠️ Franchise Ownership with Connor Groce – Interested in owning a franchise? Connor is a franchise consultant and expert with real-world experience. Join his newsletter at https://connorgroce.com/In this jam-packed episode, Michael, Heather, Bill D'Alessandro, and Mills dissect a tourism helicopter business listed at $8.5M with $1.7M in adjusted EBITDA. Located in the Southeast, this operation includes two entities, strong margins, and a recent legal win securing exclusive access to a grandfathered helipad. The hosts debate safety risks, pilot recruitment, SBA loan eligibility, and who the right buyer might be—ranging from aviation nuts to strategic tourism operators. Tune in for a fun, thoughtful analysis of this high-risk, high-reward deal. Key Highlights:- $8.5M asking price for a Southeast-based helicopter tourism business generating $1.7M in EBITDA- Legal victory secures exclusive helipad access, creating a possible local monopoly- Deep dive on pilot quality, aviation safety, and maintenance challenges- Pros and cons of SBA loan structuring for a capital-intensive business- Hilarious real-life stories of $20 helicopter rides and upsell pressure mid-flight- Ideal buyer profile: tourism veteran or aviation enthusiast with operational savvySubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

It certainly has a reputation, the tourist helicopter business, of being a little bit dangerous. You could do all the due diligence you want and still end up with a huge surprise when it comes to this later. I think the right buyer for this would be somebody who already is in the tourism industry in these markets. It's making $1.7 million a year and it's been stable. You know, that tells you this business model is working. So said, Acquisition Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Aclusion is Anonymous. We don't have 100% beard anymore.

downing on just the plus name. Welcome back everybody to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. You have all four co-hosts today. We talk about a deal that came across my email and I, it perked my interest. It's a helicopter tourism business somewhere in the southeast, eight and a half million purchase price, $1.7 million in adjusted EBITDA we find out. And there's some quirky things about this. They drop a couple hints about potential SBA eligibility for part of it.

that we talk about with Heather. There is this really interesting nuanced thing about winning a legal victory with their local airport to protect their helipad. We talk about, you know, kind of the spectrum of low-cost helicopter tourism all the way up to areas that Heather and Bill have done like Las Vegas and Hawaii. Cover a lot of different things. Talk about what type of person would buy this business, the nuances of financing it. Great episode.

Hope you enjoy. Stick around. after a quick word from our sponsor. Are you ready to take a leap into business ownership but you don't know where to start? Well, look no further than Acquisition Lab, the premier resource for entrepreneurs seeking to buy their dream business. Founded by Harvard MBA and acquisition expert Walker Dybul, the Lab is your fast-tracked success in the search diligence and acquisition process. With hands-on support, world-class resources and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, Acquisition Lab gives you the tools and confidence to navigate every step of the journey.

And we're proud to call Walker and Chelsea, the lab's director, longtime friends of the podcast. They're passionate about helping entrepreneurs like you take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream or reality, visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. I just look down and look back up and we're recording. Thanks, Michael. Oh, great. Look, if you guys are going to start the podcast, I'll click and record. That's how this goes. If you guys start the podcast, we're recording, I'm clicking the buttons. There was ever any doubt

this is live, sometimes we don't even know we're being recorded. Like, this would be cool. Let's talk about this, this and this, but make sure we avoid this. And I look down, it's like, oh, this is on record. Who has the teaser? What do we? Is this a helicopter airplane one? Oh, sorry.

I thought you guys could see my screen. There we go. Oh, it's big. I like this one. Yeah, who brought this one? Am I reading this one? Yeah, you read it. All right.

So this is a Southeast-based tourism aviation business. And it is, the asking price is $8.5 million. So it's kind of a big boy. Revenue is $4.6 million. Income is $1.7 million, and it's selling for a 4.9 multiple. So, Bill, I'm sorry, this is not your opportunity to do the math today. They did it for us. They did it for me.

So asking price eight and a half, so a little less than two times revenue. And income is 1.7. and the multiple is 4.9. So for sale is a highly profitable aviation tourism business consisting of two entities operating from two prime locations in the southeast. With over 15 years of operating history, the company has built a strong reputation for safety, service, and customer experience. Establishing a near monopoly in a high traffic tourist destination,

a recent legal victory against local government authorities has secured long-term operational rights at the airport and its grand, grandfathered helipad, protecting the business from new competitors and significantly enhancing its strategic value. Holy cow. Okay. If that doesn't scare you, then you haven't looked at enough deals. And now they want to sell immediately. Yeah. So where I go cycle in San Antonio has a business like this nearby. And in fact, there's two of them and they compete and they offer helicopter tours of San Antonio. And every day I ride back and the prices keep getting lower. And the prices keep getting lower and lower. They're like 20-minute helicopter ride, $19.

I'm like, I am not going up in a $19 helicopter. You are, there's, you're lowering the price is not increasing demand. Anyway, sorry, that was my helicopter story. The company operates a fleet of four to five leased helicopters during peak season, generating over $14,000 per helicopter per day in gross revenue. The business achieves impressive margins thanks to lean operations, fixed cost optimization and sincerely and salary revenue streams. Staff retention is excellent and the core management team is seasoned and largely self-sufficient, allowing the owner to operate the business passively. All helicopters are leased under a separate entity allowing the buyer to avoid high cap-ex and maintenance risk while benefiting from an efficient cost structure. With highly

defensible market positioning, a scalable operating model, and outstanding unit in economics, the business offers an exceptional opportunity for investors seeking a lifestyle business, platform acquisition are high margin tourism asset they give us a bit of historical financials here and heather it looks like they've been pretty steady so 1.1 million in adjusted ebita per year and 24 was a great year and revenue was in the high threes and then bumped up in 2024 to 4.6 million yeah it looks pretty good there pretty consistent all right let's see if they have anything more here no there's a form to fill out and that's about it so mills what are the these guys do? I think this has to be Florida, don't you guys think?

Yeah. What does the business do? What does the business do? They are really good at marketing. They have banners outside their location and the helicopters are probably branded. You're a tourist in Fort Lauderdale and you really want to see the beach and the city and you pay, I mean, $14,000 per. helicopter per day in revenue is staggering. I think they say two helipads, right? Probably a couple trips per day though, right? No, no, no, definitely. I mean, these are probably an hour-long tour. But if you're operating, you know, two helicopters, $7,000 per helicopter per day, it's an hour-long tour, you're still talking probably $850 or something. I mean, this seems like if it's an hour-long trip, this is kind of interesting. I don't know if I'm missing something on the math, but you're a tourist, you want to see the sites.

And the thing, the elephant in the room with this is there has been a recent helicopter crash in Manhattan that was a high profile person with their family. I don't know if it was a helicopter tour or if they were using it as just a means of trench. Okay. So this, I don't know, this scares me for a lot of different reasons. But yeah, it's a tourism play. So it makes me think it's in a big enough city in the southeast.

probably a beach town. I mean, I don't, I don't think like this works in Atlanta or Charlotte. Definitely not in Columbia. Yeah. I don't think. Have any of you on a tour, a tourist helicopter before? I have. Yeah.

I have to. I have to. Where did you go, Hawaii, which is, I mean, it is, it's worth it there. But I have seen them in Las Vegas and more city areas. And I don't know that I really be that interested in just flying over the beaches of Florida, you know, without mountains or whatever waterfalls to look at. So I guess, I guess these are everywhere, but they are dangerous. And every place that operates them, if you look into it, there's been a crash, you know, at least a few years ago or whatever. They're very dangerous

businesses, you know, I think it has to do with the pilots not being really highly experienced. you know, maybe they don't have as many hours as you might have in other types of commercial helicopters, and it probably gets down to the maintenance, you know, trying to make money in a tourist business. It could lead to cutting corners on maintenance anyway. And I'm not saying this business is that way, but it certainly has a reputation, the tourist helicopter business of being a little bit dangerous. So I did it in Vegas, Heather.

And it was very cool. We flew out to the Hoover Dam and through the Grand Canyon and then we flew down the trip. It was neat. And Mills, to your point, I think we paid like 800 bucks a person or something. San Antonio, the 1999 special is the outlier, Michael. Oh, my God. Which kind of makes sense, right? All that fuel plus the maintenance on helicopter and everything.

But it was very cool. I was actually talking to the pilot while we did it. And she was ex-military. And she said she made great money doing it. And that, you know, it was a great gig for her. She loved flying helicopters, but she didn't love being shot at, obviously. And it was great. And she was making good money.

But as I understand it, finding the pilots is the hardest part of this business, is making sure you can staff it with people who are qualified and excellent. And to your point, Heather, if you compromise on that, you get really stuck. You're like, well, I got a whole bunch of bookings. I got a whole bunch of fixed costs. And I need to book revenue. And you might be tempted to compromise on the experience of your pilots, which doesn't bite you until it does.

us. And I think, like, Bill and Heather, when y'all did it, it's not just a silent tour, right? You kind of have to have a person who is not only a skilled pilot, but also has some salesmanship and the ability to present and say, hey, the history of, you know, this thing that we're flying over, like they can't just be a jerk. So you're getting like a narrower, narrower subset of people who are potential, you know, quality hires. And I will add one thing. They want to tip, you know, so the, the pilot is getting a tip at the end. And so they want to make sure you are amazed by what you've seen, which can lead also to risky things, like going too close to the waterfall or what, you know, it could to make sure that you're having a great time and you're

seeing something really cool. You know, they are motivated to get a really good tip in, you know, at the end of the flight. So I have a, I have a friend that went on the $20 helicopter ride here. in San Antonio down at the Janke Airport. He's not my smartest friend. Anyway, went on the thing. And he said they got on it. And once they got off the ground, the pilot turned around and started trying to

upsell them on a bunch of stuff. Like, oh, would you like a bottle of champagne? Would you like a photo? Like all this stuff? Like, they're in the air. And the pilot's like trying to shill them on these upsells. He's like, yeah, we ended upspinidded $250. I'm like, yeah, like you feel a lot of pressure.

Like, you feel like if you're not going to pay, you might not make it back. So that's a good. break out the menu, you know, safe landing is an extra $20. That'll be an extra $100. Yeah. So, I mean, this business is regulated, right? I just can't, and they talk about this a little bit.

I can't just decide, you know what? I'm going to buy a helicopter. I'm going to release a helicopter like they do. I'm going to find a pilot and, you know, just start this overnight. It's just like, you know, other rides and attractions. They get inspected. The state, you know, authority regulates them. what do you think about this recent legal victory over local government?

It sounds like it's not related to their ability, like, hey, we think we're qualified to fly and you say we aren't, but we just proved we are. It seems like it's related to the airport and a helipad that they don't. I think it's access to the helipad. Uh-huh. It could also be noise abatement. You know, like in Kauai, I know, like in Kauai, I know they've had. they've had legal fights about the helicopters just being too loud around certain neighborhoods and areas.

And so I think it could be both. It could be access, like they want to use the helipad for something else at the airport, or it also could be the neighborhoods around, you know, where they fly, you know, feeling like it's a nuisance. They are loud. Well, I think it's both. If you read the sentence, it says a recent legal victory against local government has secured long-term operational rights at the airport and its grandfathered helipad.

And I think that means that this helipad is probably too close and it's too loud, right? And now there's a noise ordinance or you couldn't build another helipad like this in their area. And I think they have probably recently sued and won long-term access to this helipad. And then the sentence finishes protecting the business from new competitors, which means that I imagine this helipad is fully booked, right? So if you want to compete with them, you can't. Right? Like, they're the only ones that can fly from this helipad,

and it's probably in a place where you really want the helipad to be, and they really, people don't like the noise, but it's grandfathered. So obviously you want to look into it, but this actually could be a really nice moat. Yeah. It makes people to buy the helipad and get rid of all the helicopters. Like, I'm just going to be in the helipad rental business,

and I have the only helipad for 30 miles. That's a good. Mills, is that where you were going? No, I was just thinking, you know, it's never a positive connotation when somebody says a recent legal victory. Like, like, okay, so it could still be appealed. It could be upturned. There could be ongoing litigation. You could have backlash from this.

I mean, they're spinning it as a positive thing. I just, I would have a lot more questions. And this is one of those things that you could read, you know, the legal complaint. if there was a lawsuit, you could debrief it some with the attorney. You could do all the due diligence you want and still end up with a huge surprise when it comes to this later. Yeah, I mean, obviously you're deligensing this legally, right? You're hiring a lawyer and you're digging into this. But I'm not like panicked by this.

Like, I'm going to diligence this. And if this holds up and is not going to get overturned and seems like a solid win, it is a great moat. Is there, are there any specific geographies that you guys would say, you know, okay, I liked it if it was in these cities, but I don't like it in this city? Or is the revenue proof enough that like the geography works? I mean, I think I'd care a little bit about like growth in the geography. But yeah, the revenue to some degree and profit. I mean, it's making $1.7 million a year and it's been stable.

You know, that tells you this business model is working. Now, if this is some city that, I don't know, I think I'm very sour on the prospects over the next 20 years, I don't love that. But probably it's fine. Yeah, because my mind goes to, what are they spending $3 million a year on? Yeah. Yeah. Pilots, marketing. California.

Access. Landing fees for sure. Fuel. Hey, everybody. If you've listened to the show, you've probably heard us talk about franchises. While franchises can be a great path to business ownership for the right person, like, there's a lot of pitfalls. And it's important to be really careful, as there are certainly good franchises to be in and bad franchises. that you don't want to be in.

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maintenance, the fuel, the helipad access, the labor, you know, all that stuff. Insurance, as we mentioned earlier, is not going to be a small expense. And to be honest, I'm kind of impressed by the margins anyway. Yeah, I thought so too. I thought that actually the expenses were kind of low in my mind. I'm not sure about the, you know, they've got another entity and they're saying there's no CAPEX, but I mean, if you're owning the business and you're ultimately owning the aircraft in another entity you still have cap x it's just you know maybe they've optimized it for taxes but uh you know

you do have you do have to replace things you do have to do a lot of maintenance um so i'm sure that's part of that that's part of the expense as well it's built into the lease here i guess yeah you know if you just look at this you know this net income this net margin profile it's 37.3% if you take that down to the 14,000 dollar per helicopter per day in gross revenue. They're making, each helicopter's making like $5,200 a day net. That just seems staggering when you think about it on that level. I wonder, you know, how sustainable it is, especially if there's some kind of quirky thing

with the leasing structure and maybe, you know, maybe we're not seeing all the way through to the true net dollars net of kind of, you know, ownership costs. This might just be net of leasing costs or something like that. but you would definitely want to understand. And this is pretty common, I will say, for asset-intensive businesses like this, fleet-based businesses, where there is a separate company that, you know, is a leasing company for tax advantage reasons. But the expense is still there.

It's just tax-optimized. This one entity's, you know, income statement and balance sheet. It's in a sister companies. So one thing was noting. Go ahead. Oh, just one thing worth noting. They list income at $1.7 million, and then down below, they say that's adjusted EBDA. So it's a 4.9 multiple of adjusted EBDA, not actual net income.

So, anyway, over to you, Heather. Yeah. So there is depreciation, obviously, added back in there. And that would be the question is how much. But there could be a deferred CAPX expense here, right? So you've got four good years they're showing us. But maybe next year or the year after, you have to buy a new helicopter. you know, you have to replace ones.

You have to look at the fleet and how old it is and, you know, how many miles. And there comes a point where I imagine they have to replace these. Yeah, and you would want to start amortizing that to say, okay, if a helicopter costs, let's just say it's a million dollars and they last five years, then you need to factor $200,000 a year in maintenance cabbacks, whether it's a year that you're actually purchasing one or not. Right. And speaking of not to bring up the story of the helicopter crash in New York,

But I believe it, you know, it appeared to be a mechanical failure mid-flight. You know, it appeared to be some kind of maintenance or, you know, some kind of mechanical failure. I'm sure that the final report is going to, you know, take a long time, but it looked like it. I was shocked to look up that the death rate, fatal accident rate for helicopters is actually less than for private planes. Yeah, it's 0.7 versus 1.1. It's actually like 40% lower. Is that per flight or how do they normalize it? They do it per flight hour.

So they'll do like per 100,000 flight hours. And then you're 17 times more dangerous to ride in a helicopter than you are to drive in a car, which is actually lower than I thought it would be as well, like surprisingly safe. Who should buy this business? Bill. Oh, sorry. I don't know anything about it. I wrote an helicopter once in Vegas.

You didn't know anything about pet creams. You killed it with that. So why not here? That's fair. This would be my next thing. I mean, I do. I like the words near monopoly. I like the words, you know, regulatory moat.

You know, at my helipad, these are all good things. Stable demand. I mean, well, maybe stable. I mean, if you have a recession, like people probably not flying at helicopters on their trips, they're probably walking down the beach instead. So maybe that's another thing to think about also is how recession. proof or not is this how did this business do in COVID oh zero I'm sure yeah yeah actually they claim to be doing really well well you don't see 2020 this goes back as far as 2021 but it's amazing actually that they

did do they were back as quickly as 2021 yeah of course it's definitely Florida nothing was shut down to yeah Mills I think the right buyer for this would be somebody who already is in the tourism industry in these markets who's printing money via something else, right? You maybe have like a scuba business or you have a bit and you're probably not printing money on scuba business, but you see what I'm saying. Like maybe you have one of the, a strip mall or something like that that's nearby and you could get some strategic advantage by sharing customers between those. Like that's where my head goes.

Like I would want to see somebody already in the tourism business in Florida. Yeah, I think that's a great point. Like if you have, you know, a business that's somewhat related, you know, beachware, you know, beach rentals, golf cart rentals. Like, you would already have the built-in distribution. So, like, with every golf cart rental, there's a flyer, you know, here's a 5% off coupon for helicopter. Do you know who buys this?

I'll tell you who buys this. Some rich boomer trying to buy their kid a business. That's who's going to buy this. Oh, geez. I don't want to ride in that helicopter. That's why I don't ride these helicopters, but that's who's going to buy it. Or ex-military, you know, helicopter pilot. I actually knew a searcher that looked at a helicopter tourism business in Hawaii while he was searching.

He didn't end up buying it. He bought something else. But, you know, there's a lot of folks searching for businesses that are aviation nuts that I've seen, you know, that that's just really a passion of theirs. And it's something that they do or they've done professionally. And so it could be very appealing to somebody like that. I think it needs to be bought by somebody who is very into aviation and has that experience because the maintenance, there's a whole, lot to it recruiting the pilots. I think you want an industry insider of some kind buying this. But didn't this listing say something about an SBA loan somewhere, but I didn't see it on this page.

I think it may have in the email that I got that was, you know, it said something about, you know, about that. But I don't, I don't remember exactly what it was now. Let me see if I can find the email. Yeah, like it was like it's, they're not claiming it's fully SBA prequalified, but they said something about it. And you could get an SBA loan for something like this. Okay. The thing that I had is just a little footnote. SBA eligible question mark. And it says minimal. An estimated $1.5 million might be eligible based on tax returns. That was that was what really jumped out at me when I read this. Heather. Okay. Now that's a clue. That made me think that they're receiving a bunch of cash and it doesn't, but not all their revenue shows up on their tax returns.

That's what it sounds like. But, but you know, when you book a tourist helicopter, you use credit cards. You don't usually come with wads of cash. So that is weird. Depends on which city you're in. I guess. Okay. That's what it sounds like.

Yeah, tips. Tips. But what does that mean either? An estimated 1.5 million might be eligible. are they saying $1.5 million of the $8.5 million purchase price might be eligible? I'm just wondering, like, when I think about SBA eligibility, I think about prohibited businesses, like you can't be in the lending business. You can't be in like, you know, FICE businesses.

You can't be in payday loans, like things like that. Are there, I'm just, what does that mean that might be eligible? wrong word eligible because you're right that when we say eligible that is usually what we mean it's does it lie inside or outside the rule book and this kind of business is inside the rule book it's eligible as far as i can see um you know they may be and it made it sound like they were referring to that's how much it could qualify for based on its tax return which of course sba lenders they underwrite to the tax return adjusted ebada if you will um and this would be let's just say the income, the EBITDA of a million seven is on the tax return, you could certainly get an SBA loan for

this. The purchase price of eight and a half puts you a bit over the $5 million maximum that SBA allows, but you could still do an SBA loan. I think the problem you would have trying to do this as an SBA loan is not very many lenders want to take aircraft as collateral. And it's totally a different process. You kind of need some special expertise and even valuing the aircraft and making sure that they're safe and all of that. Not too many SBA lenders. This is not something they would do regularly, so a lot of them might just shy away from that whole process. But otherwise, I think it's eligible. So I'm not, I'm curious what that really is supposed to mean. Well, you could probably do an SBA plus a combination of like aircraft leasing, lease back. There's a bunch of aircraft lessers out there.

They don't charge seven percent of tourists. They charge 12. I would suspect. Heather, Yeah, maybe that's it. You smiled. Did I say something stupid again? No, no, you didn't. They do charge more. I get a lot of questions about, you know, alternative financing to the SBA program. And people are surprised that they all cost more, a lot more.

Cool. Well, we are coming up on The Witching Hour. Do you guys want to rate this? Heather, where do you stand? If the buyer is into aviation and has that background, I think I'd want to see more. It's an interesting business. It could be a great one for the right person. Yeah.

I like it. I like it if you do have a monopoly on this helipad thing. That's a good business. Otherwise, I worry about somebody else buying a helicopter and charging $19 like the two guys down here in San Antonio are doing. If I have a monopoly on this airport, I like it. But it's all to Mills's point, how durable is that monopoly? Mills, what do you think?

Yeah, Michael, just one thing based on what you're saying. It makes me think of like if you had a spur line from my, railroad or like if you had a special you know dock at a port or a special piece of equipment to load and unload at a port like there's some kind of residual value there whether or not it's being fully realized and whether or not this can continue i i'm curious about where this is like that is enough reason that i would sign the nda just to go is this like in tallahassee is it in miami is it like in rural georgia like i just want to know where like what's the story behind the location, you know.

Plot twist. It's in Alabama. Sorry, Alabama. I'll make fun of Mississippi next time. All right. On that note, thanks everybody for being here. I hope you enjoyed this. This is a really good fine, Mills.

Kudos to you. Thank you. Co-host of the day. You win the award. All right. If you enjoyed this, tell your friends. And if you buy this helicopter deal, tell us about it because it's fascinating. We will come do a live episode on the helipad.

Come pick us up in your helicopter. Let's go. All right, catch you all later.