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: Helicopter Work Aids, Louisiana, USA After years of creating custom maintenance products, longtime mechanic turns side project into a successful helicopter tooling business. By Jen Boyer Helicopter mechanic Jay LaCaze earned his airframe and powerplant (A&P) license in 1973 from Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During that time, helicopter A&Ps often needed to get creative with tools given the fixed-wing–centric focus in the aviation industry. LaCaze created his first tool in the late 1980s. Fellow mechanics took notice immediately and began asking him to make them tool sets too. It didn’t take long for LaCaze to realize he had a business concept on his hands and Helicopter Work Aids was born. LaCaze’s tools sold solely by word of mouth until 2013. Mechanics who worked with him at Air Logistics Group in Louisiana would take their LaCaze-made tools when they changed jobs, which sparked interest from their new coworkers. These mechanics would then ask LaCaze to make them a tool set. Family Business LaCaze’s sons, Joseph and Allan, earned their A&Ps in 2013 from Sowela Technical Community College in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Around the same time, their father lost his job. So, the family built the company’s first website to sell the nearly 70 tools Jay LaCaze had invented or modified over the years, turning the company into the senior LaCaze’s full-time job. Between 2013 and 2018, the company expanded from one lathe and mill to a 2,500-sq.-ft. shop and hired two employees from outside the family. All three LaCaze A&Ps worked as mechanics in the helicopter industry for well-known operators in the Gulf of America (also known as the Gulf of Mexico) and southern United States. Through their collective experience, they built Helicopter Work Aids as a “by mechanics, for mechanics” company. Company Expansion Helicopter Work Aids acquired Helitools in 2022, increasing its inventory to around 450 tools and adding to its staff. In 2024, the company moved out of a backyard workshop into a 16,000-sq.-ft. facility with room to grow. Helicopter Work Aids is currently buzzing with activity following a surge in orders after participating in its first VERTICON show earlier this year in Dallas, Texas. The company fabricates more than 700 tools in-house with over a dozen employees. It’s begun developing new business relationships and is currently expanding its tooling for the Airbus H125/AS350 and Sikorsky UH-60. “We are also in our first partnership with a well-known industry manufacturer for a maintenance tool for one of their products,” says Joseph LaCaze. “It’s exciting for us, as it’s our first tool partnership with a manufacturer of helicopter parts.” 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.
