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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Northern Air Cargo adds maintenance service to its large menu of transportation alternatives Company provides regular cargo service for large, hazardous, or other unusual loads to destination across Bush Alaska Petroleum Directory Staff
One of the oldest and most trusted companies in Alaska’s aviation industry is opening a new chapter providing maintenance service for turbine aircraft at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Northern Air Cargo started the new business, Northern Air Maintenance Services and landed a contract last July to take care of Boeing 737-200 aircraft. They also formed another division to provide ground service.
“There’s a lot of potential for the repair station business here,” says Keven Schlosstein, vice president of corporate support services for the company. “We have a staff of quality airframe and power plant mechanics. At some point in the future, we may be looking for other opportunities to expand.
“We’re a new business unit within Northern Air Cargo and we’re looking to establish ourselves,” she continued. “Right now we are focused on a single customer — focused on excellent customer service.” Top-notch experience Northern Air Cargo was in an excellent position to add the new service, she notes, with nearly half a century of experience in Alaska aviation and more than a decade in the turbine aircraft business since the company added 727 cargo jets to its fleet in 1991.
The contract calls for Northern Air Aviation Services, a separate division of the new business unit within NAC, to take care of all the ramp operations that involve loading and unloading passengers and cargo, Schlosstein said. The new company, Northern Air Maintenance Services, operates as a Part 145 repair station under the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Our involvement is everything it takes to make sure our clients are fully satisfied with all of the services we provide,” adds Nick Karnos, NAC’s account manager for Anchorage, Barrow and Prudhoe Bay. Storied fleet Northern Air Cargo started back in 1956 with a pair of C-82 “Flying Boxcars” and a couple of dynamic leaders, Robert “Bobby” Sholton and Maurice Carlson. The Sholton family remains very active in the company’s executive ranks, with Rita Sholton serving as chairman and CEO, Mary Sholton working as head of Northern Air Fuel and Paul Sholton as corporate counsel and safety director.
The C-82s were workhorse aircraft that served the company until 1982, joined in 1969 by the DC-6 aircraft that now form the bulk of the fleet. Northern Air Cargo owns more than a dozen, making it the largest operator of the big, graceful four-engine planes in the world.
“The fact is, the DC-6 aircraft that we fly — they more or less fill the same niche that the DeHavilland Beaver floatplane fills in the floatplane market,” Karnos says. As long as NAC can keep the big birds flying, they just do the job better than anything else.
The DC-6 holds a cargo of up to 30,000 pounds and with its high wings it is well-suited to the gravel airstrips that serve much of rural Alaska and the remote sites where new mines and other resources are being developed. NAC has been flying supplies to the new Pebble mine development near Iliamna, for example.
“Very few people in Alaska can take aircraft into the places where we take them,’ Karnos notes. “We’re capable of landing these things in all sorts of places. We did some on a frozen lake.”
Regular scheduled cargo service into a broad swath of Alaska’s Bush, plus bypass mail service, provide the biggest part of the revenue picture for Northern Air Cargo, which transports around a hundred million pounds of cargo every year, Karnos said. NAC has scheduled service to 16 Alaska airports from its hub in Anchorage.
In addition, NAC has a unique wrinkle with its “flagstop” service, which can be provided to more than 40 additional Alaska communities. NAC can redirect a regularly scheduled flight to make an extra stop at the shipper’s destination for oversized freight or cargo that won’t fill an entire charter flight. It’s cheaper than charter service.
But “the charter work is what the company was originally founded on, and it’s a specialty item that continues to this day,” Karnos says. Trio of jets Along with the DC-6 aircraft, Northern Air Cargo has three 727 freighters, with a capacity of 40,000 pounds each. The jets all have hush and gravel kits, allowing them to land on Bush airstrips and in places where noise is a problem.
“What works about the 727 is that from Anchorage to all the points in our system, the distances are ideal for jets,” Karnos said. “The distances we are covering here are beyond most people’s grasp.”
The company also has an ATR-42 aircraft, a turboprop plane made in Europe and used extensively in the Arctic, particularly in Canada. But Karnos says NAC isn’t planning to pursue an earlier plan to expand its ATR fleet. The 727s and DC-6 aircraft are just better for what the company needs, he said. Oil industry connections Northern Air Cargo generally can’t compete with truck transport via the Dalton Highway for getting loads to Prudhoe Bay, but it retains its service there to keep the NAC flag flying with Alaska’s dominant industry.
“Prudhoe represents a five-percent type of thing,” Karnos estimates.
But road supply only goes so far on the North Slope, and NAC is providing the supply chain for ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum for their Alpine project, which gets many of its supplies by air.
“What you are seeing there is the model for future development,” Karnos thinks. “As a lifelong Alaskan, and having been on the site up there — what I’ve seen is the cleanest impact development I’ve seen in my lifetime here. I would expect to see much more of that in the Arctic.”
With potential oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as well as in roadless areas of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, there could well be more oil industry business for NAC in the years to come. There may well be more developments that are similar to Alpine, keeping their impact low by using air freight for a bigger part of the supply chain.
“Our business has grown with the state and with the evolving needs of our very diverse customer base,” Stephanie Holthaus told Petroleum News. “Northern Air Cargo continues to address changes in the aviation industry and markets with new ideas for handling and moving cargo.” Freight from all over To serve its Alaska customers with a one-stop shop, Northern Air Cargo set up a freight forwarding service a few years ago. NACLink works with other carriers to bring items from anywhere in the world to customers in rural Alaska.
“Their specialty is getting stuff from Houston to Prudhoe, for example,” Karnos says. “They make it easy for people to do business with us.” Service can be priority, with one- to two-day transit time from airport to airport, general, economy or deferred service, with prices to match the urgency the customer needs.
Northern Air Cargo also provides a priority service on its regular Alaska flights, with a guarantee that the cargo will be on the next flight out. Priority cargo needs to be at the NAC terminal two hours before scheduled takeoff.
Nac-Pac is the company’s express package service, also with a next-flight guarantee if the package is ready at least 30 minutes before flight time. This service is limited to items of less than 100 pounds or less than 100 inches.
All these services are provided by a staff that has grown to roughly 275 employees around Alaska. It’s a big change from Northern Air Cargo’s roots way back in 1956.
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