Fly-In: Bremerton’s breathtaking beauty

It’s hard to imagine a more majestic setting for AOPA’s second fly-in of 2016 on August 20 than Bremerton National Airport (PWT), nestled between western Washington’s Olympic and Cascade mountains and the expansive Puget Sound.

Snow-covered Mt. Olympus dominates the view on downwind for Runway 20, while the Hood Canal conveniently points to short final for Runway 2 at the airport, just a short flight west of Seattle. Two-hundred-foot-tall western red cedars and Douglas firs on nearby hillsides wave their branches.

In 1936, a group of Washington aviation pioneers constructed a 600-foot-by-15-foot gravel landing strip on a dried-up lake bed known as Bayes’ Bog. Airport founder Robert E. Barrett wrote that once the site was selected, “We wasted no time. No feasibility studies, no site selection, no cost estimates, no environmental impact statements, no political shenanigans—we were doers!” The next weekend a work party assembled with wheelbarrows, shovels, and axes. A state highway department sickle-bar mower was conveniently parked nearby “where we could appropriate it.”

The old lake bed is now a thriving airport with a restaurant, a friendly FBO, flight training, helicopter operations, and a paved 6,000-foot by 150-foot runway with instrument approaches.

Airport manager Fred Salisbury said 186 aircraft are based at Bremerton, which counts about 67,000 operations per year. Salisbury said the Airport Diner’s fish and chips dish “was so good it’s on Microsoft’s Flight Simulator program.”

On a spring day, a Navy Seahawk helicopter dropped off a passenger while pilots in twins and singles conducted flight training operations. An Embraer jet shared the ramp with a Stinson, a Cardinal, and a seaplane. Airport officials said a new aviation-themed playground will welcome pilots and families in time for the fly-in. Three floatplane training centers dot Seattle’s Lake Washington and Lake Union.

The city of Bremerton is home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the Puget Sound Navy Museum, and the Harborside Fountain Park. A flower-lined walkway at to the Louis Mentor Boardwalk leads to the USS Turner Joy Museum. In fact, there’s so much to see and do in the Bremerton-Seattle area that pilots might want to schedule a couple of extra days just to take it all in.

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2016 AOPA Fly-Ins

May 21—Michael J. Smith Field (MRH), Beaufort, North Carolina
August 20—Bremerton National Airport (PWT), Bremerton, Washington
September 17—W.K. Kellogg Airport (BTL), Battle Creek, Michigan
October 1—Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, Arizona

Web: www.aopa.org/flyins/PWT

Milestones

Family-owned FBO

Thirty years of perfecting a business

By Kevin Knight

AOPA will host a fly-in at Bremerton National Airport (PWT) on August 20, 2016.

“Community” is a term pilots often apply to general aviation. However, it doesn’t mean much unless there’s a gathering place and enthusiastic people to share it. Pat Heseltine learned that in 1971 as a 14-year-old at his home airport in Tacoma, Washington. His father owned a local gas station, got interested in flying, and started taking lessons. They soon had a 1963 Cessna 172, and lots of father-son time around an oil-burning stove at the airport office.

“There were always lots of old pilots down there,” Heseltine said. “They looked like fossils to me and had endless stories, like their DMEs going backwards from the local headwinds. Those guys lived and breathed flying.”

For the past 45 years, so has he. Heseltine is founder, owner, and head cheerleader of Avian Flight Center at Washington’s Bremerton National Airport. It’s across the Puget Sound from Seattle, and one of the few family-owned FBOs in the United States. It exemplifies how a committed fixed-based operator can transform an airport and energize the local flying community.

Bremerton’s 6,000-foot runway was a U.S. Navy landing field during World War II. After military use declined, things started looking a bit rough around the edges. Heseltine lived nearby and visited occasionally, but he was busy as an A&P and occasional crop duster and fish spotter.

In 1981, he bought a Cessna floatplane in Louisiana and brought it home. Nearly broke, but full of ambition, he was soon running a floatplane repair business on American Lake south of Seattle. He was there four years when opportunity appeared in February 1985.

An engine shop at the Bremerton airport was for sale after its owner died. It was housed in a ramshackle, 6,000-foot Quonset hut with poor lighting and no insulation. Fortunately, Heseltine’s banker was a pilot who believed in GA and this hard-working, 28-year-old mechanic.

“We had to figure things out as we went,” Heseltine said. An FBO and some aviation businesses had been on the field but failed. With the proper facilities, Heseltine knew he could provide first-class flight training, a flying club, aircraft maintenance, complete engine rebuilds, pilot supplies, parts, and fuel. The local Port Authority agreed, and constructed a large hangar and office complex for Avian that opened shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“There was a period there when the Pacific Northwest was losing an FBO a month. We dug in our heels and did everything possible to give customers the best service and experience possible,” Heseltine said.

In the past 30 years Avian has trained more than 1,500 pilots, rebuilt more than 1,000 engines, maintained countless airplanes, and exposed hundreds of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and school groups to GA. It currently has 23 employees, four Cessnas, a Beechcraft Sierra, and a Piper Seneca.

“I still love coming to work,” said Heseltine, who met his wife at the airport in 1988. “I’m optimistic and keep looking for opportunities to improve. There are always new challenges. I like those, and love being around airplanes.”

Kevin Knight is a pilot living in Bremerton, Washington.

Web: http://www.aopa.org/flyins/PWTwww.aopa.org/flyins/PWT