Promote your company to the global vertical aviation industry through the VAI Member Spotlight, a free benefit for VAI member companies. Want to be featured? If you’re not already enjoying the many benefits our members receive, join VAI today! VAI Member Spotlight: Heliplanners, California, USA The heliport specialist is celebrating its 38th anniversary in July 2025. By Jen Boyer After gaining years of experience working to develop airport master plans and environmental studies for consulting firms in the United States, Jeff Wright saw a growing demand for well-planned, thoughtfully designed, safe heliports for air medical and corporate operators. In 1987, he established Heliplanners from his home in Laguna Beach, California, to help meet this need. This month, during July 2025, the company, which has more than 500 heliports globally, celebrates its 38th anniversary in business. A fixed-wing pilot with more than 50 years of experience and 2,000 hours of flight time, Wright slowly built the company into a full-service helicopter development firm. Today, Heliplanners employs seven full-time team members. Now based in Temecula, California, the company serves hospitals, law enforcement and firefighting agencies, public utilities, hotels, and individuals, with services that include heliport feasibility, site selection, planning, design, and regulatory compliance. Range of Services Heliplanners has helped develop a wide variety of heliports to meet specific needs, including at-grade; elevated on freestanding structures; on rooftop and parking garages; and near ambulance entrance canopies. The company also conducts safety audits for existing heliports, providing owners with a list of recommended improvements to bring older or poorly designed heliports into compliance with current FAA design criteria. Wright’s company is more than a heliport consulting firm. Heliplanners also provides required airspace obstruction evaluations and serves as an FAA liaison where required by Part 77 for proposed structures. Heliplanners CEO Jeff Wright and his daughter, President Kat Wright. (Heliplanners Photo) In addition, Heliplanners can support agencies with multiple heliport projects of their own, including upgrades and replacements due to out-of-date or changing regulations. For example, the company is currently working on its fourth heliport project at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. “We’re proud to have worked at some of the largest university teaching hospitals and some of the largest corporations in the country,” says Wright. “Today, business is busier than ever, which is a great sign for the vertical flight industry.” Family Business Wright’s daughter, Kat Wright, started working for her dad part time while in college, turning Heliplanners into an official family business. Now, 15 years later, she serves as president and is poised to take over full management of the company in the future—although her father says he still enjoys the work so much that he doesn’t foresee stepping away completely anytime soon. When not working for Heliplanners, Kat Wright cochairs the VAI Vertical Flight Infrastructure Industry Advisory Council, while Jeff serves each year on The Citadel Military College of South Carolina’s expert panel judging the senior civil engineering course’s vertiport design capstone project. He also gives a vertiport design presentation to students during the academic year. Jen Boyer is a journalist and marketing communicator specializing in aviation. She holds commercial, instrument, flight instructor, and instrument instructor ratings in helicopters and a private rating in airplanes.
