Air-cranes improving construction in Alaska: vision and diversification benefit development.

• Author: Anderson, Tom
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

Sometimes the origin of a business can be as fascinating as its services and work product. When it comes to the everyday communications Alaskans enjoy, like cell phone service and internet connections, one might not consider just how difficult it was to bring such technology to fruition.

Logging Origins

It was forty-three years ago in Oregon when second-generation logger Jack Erickson leased an S-64E Skycrane helicopter for his business Erickson Lumber Company. In the logging industry, mobility and lift capacity are essential to timber harvesting and sales. Erickson employed a system of reconfiguring the Sikorsky skycranes to be adaptable to log extraction and delivery. Erickson purchased more helicopters thereafter and eventually purchased the S-64 Type Certificate from Sikorsky in 1992. The company now manufactures and maintains the aircraft (renamed "Air-Crane") from its facility in Central Point, Oregon.

"Our air-cranes are in high demand and travel the world for contracts," notes David Sell, sales manager for Erickson Aviation in Alaska. Sell delineated that the company has air-cranes on contract year-round with oil companies in South America, but they come north to Alaska for spot construction. Typically the Erickson S-64F Air-Crane is used in-between projects in the Lower 48 like controlling California wildfires or installing high power lines.

The air-crane flies up to Alaska at one hundred knots per hour. The pilot can only fly by Visual Flight Rules, so day travel and weather infringe on the ease of transporting the rig to the state. When it comes to landing, the rotor wash (the stirring up of air in the immediate vicinity of the rotor blades) is significant, and the air-cranes must land at airports and specific landing zones so as not to disrupt vegetation and Alaska fauna in remote locations.

Sell says Erickson tries to secure multiple contracts in Alaska over a season so it saves on mobilization/demobilization costs and time. "The S-64F burns five hundred gallons of Jet A fuel per hour," he says. He explains that without a combination of clients and projects in the state at one time, the use of the equipment would be cost-prohibitive for Erickson, and that's why the company values and appreciates its clients and network of Alaska businesses who utilize its helicopter services.

The company's website overviews the performance specs for the Air-Crane S-64F, which includes a capacity of three people, maximum load capacity of...