All-around aviator

Hop is known in many different aviation spheres. He entered naval cadet training in 1939, graduated and was assigned to fly PBY patrol boats in the Pacific. He was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and watched helplessly as all of his squadron's planes were destroyed. Ordered to the Dutch East Indies in January 1942, the squadron he joined had 42 aircraft when he had arrived but only one by April. His most terrifying experience was evacuating political exiles at night in the open sea off Surabaya, Indonesia. "The takeoff was really 15 separate crashes," Hop recalls, "as we plowed into wave after wave. I was totally blind because it was night and I had no horizon and no way I could see the next swell coming. We got off but the severe pounding popped rivets all through the hull. We broke pencils in half, sharpened them and jammed them into the holes to stop the leaks."

If this was Hop's most terrifying experience, then the rest of the war must have been anticlimactic. He took part in the Battle of Midway, locating and directing the pickup of 33 Japanese survivors in a lifeboat. Later, flying giant four engine Liberators (PB4Ys) he flew patrol missions in the Gilbert, Marshall and Marianas Islands campaigns where he and his crew were credited with shooting down four aircraft and one they had to share with another aircraft crew. Proof of one victory is a photo Hop took from the cockpit showing a Japanese Betty bomber going down in flames. On seven consecutive missions, his aircraft had fires, engines out or other serious malfunctions. One night, Hop's aircraft was peppered by ground fire that struck the cockpit and splintered the instrument panel. Hop was wounded but got the aircraft home despite the fact that it was at night in deteriorating weather. Besides the Purple Heart for this experience, Hop came out of the war with the Distinguished Flying Cross with a gold star and the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters.

After a brief respite in the States where Hop hoped to get into test flying, he was returned to the Pacific war zone with a specially built deluxe Liberator to fly VIPs such as Herbert Hoover, Admiral Nimitz, actor Robert Montgomery and other "names" of that era. In the succeeding years, Hop had a number of Stateside assignments and was stationed overseas in Panama and North Africa. At Patuxent Naval Air Station MD, he test-flew many types of jets in preparation to fly and skipper a P6M, four-engine jet seaplane. Unfortunately, the tails came off two aircraft and the program was scrapped. At age 42, he became carrier qualified and flew 30 different types of aircraft while at Patuxent. Not an academy graduate and with only three years of college, Hop decided to retire from the Navy in 1959 as a Commander because there didn't seem to be much future left for hi in uniform and the pay was too low for him to support a wife and five children. He was selected for Captain but declined in favor of a position as director of flight operations for Collins Radio, Cedar Rapids IA where he spent seven yrs helping to develop and test the Doppler radar, autopilots and flight directors in wide use today. He flew all over the country in a Twin Beech demonstrating the flight director to government, airline and corporate decision makers, making over 2000 hooded approaches to touchdown.

In 1966, he accepted a Learjet dealership in Oklahoma. He bought a Lear 24 to fulfill a one-yr contract to fly 600 hrs at 70 cents a mile. "But I found it cost me 82 cents to operate it," Hop recalls. " However, I sold it at a profit to a gentleman in Florida on the condition that I would teach him to fly the Lear and I could use it for charters when he didn't need it." Hop concluded that arrangement , made the same deal with another owner under the title of Southeastern Jet, all the time learning the do's, don'ts and pitfalls of flying charters. In 1977, he formed Hop-A-Jet Inc under an arrangement whereby the company pays him a salary as president and a commission on sales.

"We have no desire to get bigger," Hop said. "We had only one Lear until four years ago. When you add aircraft, you add problems. Several of my pilot associates formed their own charter companies and soon had five or six aircraft. All went bankrupt because they tried to grow too fast."

And the off-the-street business keeps coming. Hop's reputation for safe, thoroughly dependable flying has kept people calling Hop-A-Jet without letup. He has flown hundreds of patients, famous personalities and high rollers who can afford the fees he charges and want the special attention he gives at any hour of the day or night. Most emergency calls seem to come at the small hours of the morning and he will have an aircraft and crew ready to go in less than an hour, if necessary. The seats can be taken out and a medical interior installed which may take a few minutes longer but normally no more than an hour.

The variety of missions and cargo taken on by Hop-A-Jet is mind-boggling: Prisoners from a drug bust in Panama; escorting a jet fighter to Brazil to provide navigational assistance; organs for transplants between hospitals; parts for space vehicles and airliners; gamblers to Las Vegas; honeymooners to Bermuda; VIPs who want to escape public view; airline passengers whose flights have been canceled; federal marshals on a manhunt; mental patients in strait jackets; foreign political figures escaping from possible incarceration or assassination; government dignitaries who prefer not to have their itineraries generally know; cardiac and injured patients who cannot travel any other way. The Who's Who list of passengers he has flown includes Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Mia Farrow, Harry Belafonte, Yogi Berra, Jack Nicklaus, Hubert Humphrey and numerous current and former newsworthy national and foreign officials and celebrities.

As with most charter operators, Hop must have payment up front or guaranteed by American Express. There are con artists out there, as any charter operator knows, and no operator can afford the loss of the thousands that it costs to fly even a Lear. Hop admits he has been "taken" several times although he always checks out a callers credentials as best he can before a flight.

How does Hop-A-Jet stay profitable? "By watching costs, ( our average fuel cost so far this year is $1.13 a gallon), flying each aircraft 100 hours or more a month to spread out the fixed expenses. Keeping the overhead down and using Lears, which have probably the lowest operating cost per mile."

So, there will be a 70th birthday party for Harvey Hop on July 25 but it will not be a retirement party. He intends to fly as long as he can pass the physical.