Photo: J.R. Hott, the president/CEO at Panhandle Helicopters, currently operates four “birds” from the business’s location near the Panama City Beach Conservation Park.
By Steve Bornhoft
As soon as it became clear that troops massed by Russia on its border with Ukraine early in 2022 were preparing an invasion, J.R. Hott reached out to Anastasiia Khudiaieva, a woman he had met 10 years earlier when she and a friend visited Panama City Beach, Florida.
Hott had provided the two young women with housing during their Florida stay and kept in touch with Khudiaieva after she returned to Ukraine. Concerned when war broke out for the safety of her and her family, Hott urgently sought to make contact.
Khudiaieva, her husband, mother and two small children were safe, he would learn. They had made their way to Cyprus in advance of the conflict and from there, they would move to Germany. Hott consulted an immigration attorney in Fort Walton Beach seeking a way for the family to come to the United States.
At the time, the only possibility was to attempt entry from Mexico. That was a risk that Khudiaieva was unwilling to run.
When, in April 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security established the humanitarian Uniting for Ukraine program as a way for Ukrainian citizens to come to the United States as parolees, Hott was an early participant. His application to sponsor Khudiaieva and family was approved within a workweek.
For months after they arrived in the U.S., Hott put the family up. They have become for Hott, a bachelor without children, the family he never had.
Today, Khudiaieva is an employee of ArroTech, a tenant business at TechFarms. ArroTech has pioneered an autonomous, metal-detecting drone and data collection system capable of pinpointing the locations of landmines and other unexploded ordnance in Ukraine and other nations infected with unattended weapons of war.
Hott spent his early years in Moorfield, West Virginia, a county seat with fewer than 3,000 residents, who are vastly outnumbered by the chickens in town.
“Poultry capital of West Virginia,” Hott said. “They had one stoplight that they turned off at 7 o’clock.”
Right out of high school, Hott found employment with the Fairchild Republic Co. in Hagerstown, Maryland. He worked on the A-10 Thunderbolt jet, which was developed for the U.S. Air Force. Later, he managed a camera store and got into commercial real estate appraising before joining the U.S. Navy in 1988.
Hott served as a Navy diver for 20 years, almost half of them while stationed at Naval Support Activity Panama City’s Navy Experimental Diving Unit, located in Panama City Beach. His second command in the Navy had been the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Its Diving Biomedical Technical Functional Area was merged with the NEDU in Panama City Beach as part of Base Realignment and Closure commission proceedings in the 1990s.
“As I was nearing retirement, Panhandle Helicopter came up for sale and my family, knowing that I was a Navy diver with no marketable skills, bought me a job,” Hott said.
Not entirely true — Hott had earned his commercial helicopter pilot’s license while at NEDU. Today, he is the family business’s president and CEO. Three siblings are partners.
When Panhandle Helicopter became a Hott property, it was located at Front Beach and Powell Adams roads behind the Donovan’s Reef Bar. A helicopter pad had been there since the 1980s. The business was housed in a shack that was 14 feet square. The “restroom” was at the landlord’s nearby convenience store.
The shack was replaced with a building larger and far sturdier, but eventually development overtook the location.
“In 2019, the St. Joe Company announced that they were going to be building the Embassy Suites resort right in our approach and departure path,” Hott said. “I knew that was the final nail in the coffin.”
With plans do develop a “significant heliport,” Hott purchased 10.5 acres from St. Joe not far from the Panama City Beach Conservation Park in May 2020. Today, it is home to a two-story helicopter center where pilot training takes place and sightseeing flights originate.
In addition, Panhandle Helicopter is working through the application process for FAA Part 135 certification, which would allow the business to offer charter flights on demand. And, it has an aviation fuel service on the drawing boards.
The number of helicopters Hott has in his hangar, currently four, varies as a function of how strong business is.
“If capacity exceeds demand, helicopters will eat your lunch,” Hott said.
Hott and Panhandle Helicopter are among the sponsors of the second annual Ukrainian Culture Day whose proceeds benefit altruTek, a nonprofit that supports demining efforts in Ukraine.
