From the Cockpit with Everts Air Cargo’s Robert Everts

The Alaskan air cargo sector is a niche market due to its location, region and distance from the U.S. mainland, with a few cities, such as the state capital, Juneau, and Kodiak, Yakutat and Adak, depending heavily on airfreight to support them. Fairbanks-based Everts Air Cargo provides service in the state and region. It is the offspring of Tatonduk Flying Service, which was established in 1978 by parent company Tatonduk Outfitters Limited. Everts Air Cargo is a Part 121 airline that incorporates a range of regional and narrowbody freighters and has provided ad hoc and scheduled cargo service to Alaska for thirty years. [caption id="attachment_56864322" align="alignright" width="450"] Robert Everts, chief executive and owner of Everts Air Cargo and Everts Air Alaska. (Photo/Everts Air Cargo)[/caption] Cargo Facts recently connected with Robert Everts, chief executive and owner of Everts Air Cargo and sister airline, Everts Air Alaska, to discuss the state’s air cargo market, lessons learned from the pandemic and developments on the horizon. What follows is an edited version of the conversation. Cargo Facts : To what extent has the competition for air cargo in Alaskan airspace impacted your strategy over the past couple of years and what has it taught you going forward? Robert Everts: 2020 was a great year for us. We’re considered essential service providers, so we really didn’t miss a lick. During that period, we had roughly fifteen to eighteen days where we were down, like everybody else, but we were back right away. There are a lot of people in remote Alaska that still need air freight service, so we had the luxury of being one of those carriers that was able to jump back into flying and not really skip a beat. From that perspective, we were busy and probably had the lowest turnover in our workforce between 2020 and 2021. At the end of 2021, we started to see the migration again, as people started making career advancements. One of the challenges that we have out of our main base in Anchorage is the available ramp space for our operations. Services are expensive and it’s all critical infrastructure that impacts the airlines, as far as competitiveness. We’re one of four big carriers here in Alaska and we’re all very competitive with one another, but at the same time, we complement one another when we’re having a downturn. CF : As the dust starts to settle, is there a difference in revenue generation then versus now and is there more of a competitive edge now that things are starting to return to normal? RE: No, I think that the biggest challenge that we’re seeing now is the heavy competition for labor and trying to understand where that work-life balance is. We are now really focused on the young people moving into the workforce and trying to find our sweet spot. In Alaska, I think we’re competing heavily for mechanics and pilots across the board with FedEx, UPS, Alaska, Northern Air Cargo, Linden and other smaller carriers, especially on the pilots; you can’t expect to have those guys around for too long. It really helps to be well-diversified in this business, not doing just cargo or passenger operations, but expanding into freight forwarding, fueling or some other logistics companies that support the industry. CF : How many more years will Everts Air Cargo continue operating the MD-80F fleet? RE: Right now, we’re in the process of converting a seventh MD-80F with AEI. We have the MD-80F on a seven- to ten-year plan, as our model throughout the last thirty plus years has been to get into these airplanes and become self-sufficient in Alaska. We tried to do everything in-house, right down to our heavy checks. We have our own simulator right here in Fairbanks, and never skipped a beat on our training and never skipped a beat on our maintenance. We have lots of spares because we purchased a bunch of airplanes for part-out and parked them in the desert. It’s a different approach to operating aircraft when compared to other carriers, but it’s one that’s worked for us, especially here up in Alaska, in remote locations where when something breaks you can’t afford to wait two days to get it. I think seven to ten years is the plan, but fuel pricing may drive us in a different direction. CF : On 737-800 conversions, are you still in the preliminary stage of evaluation and acquisition? RE: We always keep another platform on the table. Throughout our daily operations, we’re always thinking about what’s going to be in the future, and the 737-800 has been looked at now for the last three years. At one point, it was the 737-300 and then that quickly disappeared, then the -400 and -500, both were never a good fit for us. We’re always looking at something new, because you never know when a deal is going to come up. The other thing that’s always on our table now is the UAVs. We’re paying close attention to that and it’s going to be equally critical, especially to our program in Alaska. CF : Would it then make sense to buy and convert more MD-80s in the meantime? RE: Well, there’s only so much of a niche market you can go after, and there are only so many small pockets of business. One thing it doesn’t afford us is the opportunity to mix it up with the integrators and carry containerized cargo on schedules for them. Everybody’s got the containers that are all over the place for the Boeing fleet, but they won’t fit into the Douglas airframe and allow you to maximize the volumetric efficiency. That’s why the MD-80F will never fly for DHL and FedEx in any large capacity. It’s going to be on niche projects and niche jobs, but not a schedule. CF : You’ll soon take on your first couple of Cessna SkyCouriers. Which other regional freighter types are in consideration to be added to the Everts Air Cargo fleet right now? RE: We were going down the road some time ago with the ATR platform but the marketplace and the labor shortages drove us out from the 7- to 10-tonne freighters. It’s so difficult, especially in the niche business when the money is almost the same. Some of those regional aircraft are just as expensive as Boeing equipment. We really were driven from the smaller equipment because of the lack of desire from people wanting to work or fly into the places that we operate from. Beyond that, we’ve got one SkyCourier coming in September — a full freighter — and two combis coming by mid-2024. All of them will serve under the Everts Air Alaska brand. CF : How long have you been looking at that aircraft type, and why two combis instead of freighters? RE: With our small aircraft operation, part of our supplemental program is passengers and cargo at the same time. We’re going to the same markets and there’s a fair amount of passenger traffic as well and the cargo loads are not consistent. It’s a good utilization of the aircraft to have the flexibility to fly both people and cargo at the same time. Initially, we didn’t think that way, but we got to thinking about it and the interior Alaska business has changed where there was a little more demand to move some people and it just made good sense. The SkyCourier obviously will do twice the work that the Cessna Caravan will do with a single pilot and our motto around here is to do more with less. It was a good opportunity for us, especially with higher labor, maintenance and pilot costs, and being able to move twice the amount of cargo was important as well for us. But we looked at the aircraft all the way back in around 2016, when we first made a commitment to the SkyCourier. So, it’s been a long time coming, and now I’ve got to learn how to fly another airplane. 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