Flying higher with new wings.

• Author: Christianson, Susan Stark
• Position: Wings of Alaska

Flying is a family affair for this southeastern Alaska family.

Sitting in his office atop the airline hangar, Wings of Alaska President Bob Jacobsen is surrounded with images of flight. The paintings that surround his desk by Alaskan artists John Fehringer, Herb Bonnet and Byron Birdsall all capture images of float planes soaring high above Alaska's majestic peaks, inland waterways and glacial ice. The renowned artists share the wall space with family photographs, photos of Juneau's airport, and Fred Machetanz paintings of real Alaskan sourdoughs.

An old "Fox Air Service" sign lies juxtaposed a Southeast Skyways flight bag, a bicycle, shelves of books and boxes of financial records. Piles of papers and trade magazines lay neatly stacked on his desk, while architectural renderings of the new Wings hangar cover a conference table. A small model of an Alaska Airlines jet teeters precariously atop a bookcase, as if ready for take off.

Taking off is a subject with which Jacobsen is intimately familiar.

It started at the University of Oregon when he decided to learn to fly Jacobsen came back to Juneau with degrees in public administration and political science, and with a pilot's license. After spending a winter with 80-year-old family friend and Alaskan pioneer, John E. Smith, on an island in Chilkat Lake, Jacobsen went to work on a purse seiner.

"The skipper of the boat believed he could increase production if he had an airplane spotting fish for him, so he and I bought a plane together and I started in the flying business."

Jacobsen toured Alaska from Kah-Shakes, south of Ketchikan, to King Salmon in Bristol Bay, and many points in between. One plane soon led to another investment in the airline business.

"My father and I went to an auction for repossessed De Haviland Beaver float planes from an outfit that went bankrupt in Sitka in 1979. It was a cold, miserable April day, and no other serious bidders showed up. The minimum bids on the planes were substantially less than market value. Although I had gone with the intention to bid on one plane, my dear-old Dad suggested that if one plane was a good deal, two should be better; and I had better buy both of them. Overnight, I was really in the airplane business."

The flight that Jacobsen started became a joint venture with his best friend, the late Drew Haag, then soared to a business with approximately $5 million in annual revenues and more than 100 employees during Alaska's visitor season.

Under Jacobsen's watchful eye, Wings of Alaska has become one of the most successful regional air carriers in the state, providing scheduled passenger, freight and mail service throughout northern southeastern Alaska, glacier flightseeing tours and charter air service.

A December, 1992, "Entrepreneur Magazine" article cited Jacobsen as an example of the best of the Last Frontier's entrepreneurial spirits.

Jacobsen, however, cites the cooperation of family, friends, and employees as the key to Wings' success. Though he owns more Wings stock than other investors, Jacobsen's mother, sisters Karen Hansen and Kathy Elmore, brothers Jim and John Jacobsen, and the company's finance officer, John Lucas, are also shareholders in the corporation. Other owners of Wings have included Drew Haag and Juneau's Fire Chief, Michael Fenster. Lucas, the company's financial advisor since 1982 and a former Governor's Director of Audit and Management Services, joined Wings full time in 1992 and garners credit for much of the nuts-and-bolts of the company's fiscal savvy.

"The company is a unique mix of family shop, fiscal sensibility, hard work and creative risk-taking. The Alaskan, can-do spirit is alive and well at Wings," Lucas said.

A Family Affair

If you ask Jacobsen's mother, Jerry Jacobsen, her children were born with a special Alaskan pluck.

Sitting in the Juneau home where she grew up, Karen Jacobsen Hansen, a Wings' owner and the company's marketing director...