Air Transportation Services hauls Bush freight: long history and love of flying leads Ryan family into serving rural Alaska communities.

• Author: Kalytiak, Tracy
• Position: NATIVE BUSINESS - Company overview

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A drill rig is a cumbersome contraption. The ones Discovery Drilling uses to retrieve geological samples in northern Alaska weigh more than 4,500 pounds each. They sit on steel skids and have an engine, transmission and tower. Broken down, they're 8 feet long, 5 feet wide and 4 feet tall.

Transporting $125,000 behemoths to tiny communities with just-as-tiny airstrips is a task Discovery Drilling entrusts to just one company--Arctic Transportation Services.

"ATS is the most capable, most diverse," said Mark Terry, Discovery Drilling's operations manager. "They've given excellent service in the 13 years I've worked here, so I've never shopped around. They have CASA aircraft that are unique, one of the few aircraft that can handle our equipment and get into short airfields."

ATS is a 51-year-old company that flies 10 million pounds of bypass mail and cargo each year from seven hubs in Bush Alaska--Bethel, Kotzebue, Nome, Unalakleet, Emmonak, Saint Mary's and Aniak--out to communities as far north as Point Hope, as far south as Platinum, as far west as Saint Lawrence Island and as far east as Stony River. ATS flies to larger communities, such as Hooper Bay and Emmonak, and tiny enclaves like Kobuk and Nunam Iqua.

Wilfred Ryan Sr., who is Inupiaq, launched the company that evolved into ATS. He'd known since the age of 10 that flying would be the focus of his life --the first time he saw a plane land in his hometown of Unalakleet in 1936.

"He was so amazed this thing could fly, he decided to become a pilot," Ryan's eldest son, Wilfred "Boyuck" Ryan said.

Wilfred noticed that planes flew in and out to pick up sick or injured people and transport them to hospitals. He wanted so desperately to fly that he devised a plan for himself and his friend Clarence Katchatag to eat rabbit fur until they got sick and had to be flown out for medical attention, according to an account of Ryan's life published in the statewide magazine "First Alaskans."

The scheme didn't work, so Wilfred's first flight happened years later when he journeyed to Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training as part of the Alaska Territorial Scouts in World War II.

BEGINNING A BUSINESS After the war ended, Wilfred's wife,

Eva, worked as a fourth-grade teacher at a Bureau of Indian Affairs' school to support the couple while Ryan took flying lessons at Phillips Field in Fairbanks.

"My mom was the sole breadwinner for the entire family, supported my father's ability to...