SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Ledcor Air Ltd., the new owner of Arctic Sunwest Charters and Trinity Helicopters, is rebranding the Northern aviation companies under its Summit Air banner.
Arctic Sunwest and Summit Air Charters are merging to operate as one business under the name Summit Air. Meanwhile, Trinity Helicopters has been renamed Summit Helicopters.
"What it was really was a merger of several different aviation companies, and the perspective of the parent company was that the branding of Summit Air was the strongest branding. So they want to proceed with that as the new brand," said Myles Cane, vice-president of operations for Summit Air.
"We feel there's power in a strong brand and we're pulling on the strengths of every one of these individual companies. We're very excited about the new brand and about moving forward and offering our customers a stelar choice for aviation solutions."
The Vancouver-based owner of Summit Air completed its acquisition of Trinity last January, and Arctic Sunwest last year.
Summit Air moved into the Arctic Sunwest facility last September when the merger began.
The merger of the companies did not come with any job losses, Cane said.
Amid slowing economic activity, particularly in the mineral exploration sector in the NWT, a number of aviation companies have been moving jobs south to centralize operations, but Summit Air and Summit Helicopters' strategy will involve keeping its Yellowknife employee base - now comprised of 135 people in total - in the North, Cane said.
"While a lot of air carriers are moving their jobs south we're not seeing any benefits - in fact we're seeing it to be a negative to business operations - to centralize our business. So even though we're owned by Ledcor we intend on adding jobs back to the North because we just see it pays dividends in the way we're able to do business rather than this model of centralizing."
Summit now has a combined fleet of 24 aircraft, including Twin Otters, Dash 8s, and seven helicopters.
Arctic Sunwest, a passenger and cargo charter services airline, was formerly owned by RTL Robinson Enterprises Ltd.
Trinity Helicopters was previously owned by Donnie and Joan Robinson and Rob Carroll.
