A new tandem-rotor superstar is making an appearance on the Jumbotron at the Airborne Energy Solutions dispatch office in Whitecourt.

It’s a Boeing Vertol 107, a muscular helicopter recently added to the company fleet. This baby can haul up to 10,000 pounds of cargo over impenetrable forest and muskeg, then set it down on a dime.

“Anything can be heliported. It’s a matter of finding a helicopter big enough,” mused Gareth Beverley, Calgary-based sales boss of this fascinating well-service outfit.

Airborne Energy Solutions photos
Well owners have to dig deep for conventional site servicing, but helicopters allow access to hard-to-reach properties.

Finding a chopper isn’t a problem for Canada’s busiest team of flying well-service experts. Airborne Energy Solutions owns about 70 helicopters, working out of eight Western Canadian bases.

Some are as compact as a boardroom table. Others could airlift your house to Kamloops. As many as 60 can be in the air at any one time, and each is tracked, via blips on the Jumbotron screen, by Alberta’s most vigilant dispatcher.

Depending on load requirements, big or small choppers transport Airborne Energy’s lightweight, six-piece, coiled tubing units to remote, tough-to-access well sites. Once on the ground, service technicians perform well cleanouts, stimulations, down-hole tool deployment/retrieval and similar chores.

This is a fairly new approach and it’s rapidly winning converts.

Airborne Energy Solutions photo


Traditionally, remote northern well sites have been serviced only in winter, when frozen terrain permits heavy vehicles and equipment to roll over the tundra.

“Service crews work like mad for three or four months. But when break-up comes, they have to head south again,” explained company president/CEO John King.

“But if there were problems with the wells from late March until early December, there was no way to access them.”

So Airborne Energy’s engineers developed their lightweight coiled tubing unit. Now, by hauling in the units via chopper, Airborne’s technicians can service a well any time of year. That translates to increased production – and profit – for oil and gas producers.

“Every day of lost production is lost cash flow,” reasoned King, who insists Airborne Energy is the only company in the world utilizing this type of portable well-servicing equipment. Naturally, he believes the sales possibilities are limitless. And the company’s primary selling point sounds like a no-brainer.

It can cost well owners $28,000 an hour to bring conventional servicing units to a remote site by conventional means. But it costs closer to $3,500 an hour for one of Airborne Energy’s pilots to bring a portable unit to service a well.

Still, traditional producers sometimes have a hard time wrapping their minds around the concept.

“It’s a shift in thinking,” nodded sales boss Beverley.

Nevertheless, oilpatch clients were keen enough to allow Airborne Energy Solutions to generate an estimated $24 million in revenue last year.

As we speak, the company is operating more than 1,000 wells and has serviced more than 200 more over the past two years.

Airborne Energy’s 200 employees also do seismic work and inspect one million kilometres of pipeline each year, using an airborne spectrometer called a “sniffer unit.” It detects leaks the way a bloodhound smells a fugitive.

Meanwhile, Airborne Energy has put an aeronautic spin on the fine art of multi-tasking – instructors in two company flight schools are busy teaching well operators how to fly a chopper.

So a certified well operator can reduce client costs by flying to the well site in 15 minutes, instead of taking eight hours to drive there in a truck.

“His helicopter is the equivalent of a pickup,” King grinned. “He’s got his toolbox and his equipment right there.”

King teamed with Airborne Energy Solutions in early 2000, when RedTree Capital, his private equity fund, purchased a $5.3-million interest in the company. Other backers include Rob Peters, the polo-playing cowpoke who founded Peters and Co.

“My mandate was to look for private companies that had five- to- seven-year growth horizons and were capitalizing on trends in the energy industry,” King explained.

Of course, there’s a romantic element to this business.

Most of Airborne’s 85 pilots fit the classic, rugged-individualist mould.

Several of these top professionals have logged 5,000-plus air hours.

In 1998, for instance, company founder Eric Gould won a Canadian Medal of Bravery for flying his chopper through fire and smoke to rescue a forest firefighter, trapped in a backfire near Whitecourt.

But to the guys back in the office, the helicopters are just one more tool for maximizing oilpatch efficiency.

“When you get right down to it, they’re just loud buses,” laughed Beverley.