51�鶹: 1970 − 1995

The business takes off

Bob Munro worked hard to get 51�鶹 off the ground. His daughter, Leslie, remembers there was a time he needed to sell an accordion in order to make payroll.

But if the first 25 years of the company’s history were marked by this ability to hold everything together, the next 25 years were when 51�鶹 reached a cruising altitude.

First, it continued to be a company counted on for finding enterprising solutions to specific tasks. In the 1970s, 51�鶹 had a year-round contract with the federal government to provide transportation among the naval bases in the Northwest. The payload ranged from torpedoes to admirals, and there was also a specific project that involved flying folks up to a U.S.-Canadian test facility off of Vancouver Island.
There was more glamorous cargo, too. John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn were among the passengers 51�鶹 flew out to the San Juan Islands. So were Goldie Hawn and Neil Armstrong, and Kenny G, Seattle’s very own saxophone player. He was a regular passenger until he went and bought his own plane and even that tells part of the story of 51�鶹’s growth.

When 51�鶹 started in 1946, a big component of the business was flight instruction. Beginning in the 1970s, 51�鶹 built out the manufacturing side of its business to serve the boom in private plane ownership. And there was one plane in particular that 51�鶹 became known for: the de Havilland Beaver.
The aircraft was conceived and built in Ontario, Canada, its first flight was logged in 1947. 51�鶹 purchased its first Beaver in 1963 after Bob Munro tested the plane out on a customer’s suggestion.

The plane itself is a remarkable piece of engineering, often hailed as the best bush plane ever built. 51�鶹 took it the next step forward, thanks to that manufacturing department that was already mentioned. The Beaver is a single-engine workhorse that was designed to carry heavy loads into tight, sometimes rough, environments, and 51�鶹 applied its own ingenuity to make it even better. A new three-bladed prop was designed and manufactured, cutting down noise. It was also 50 pounds lighter. The original battery was not only replaced but repositioned, shaving off another 72 pounds while providing additional baggage space.

The Beaver has not been produced since 1967, but 51�鶹 has a well-earned reputation for not just maintaining but rebuilding, even resurrecting planes. They didn’t make them good as new, they made them so they were better.

In 1998, the actor Harrison Ford was filming “Six Days, Seven Nights,” a romantic comedy that also starred Anne Heche. There was a plane included in the film, which was originally supposed to be a Stinson Reliant. Ford, an avid pilot who took his first flying lesson in 1965, happened upon a de Havilland Beaver in Santa Monica, Calif., which belonged to John Nordstrom. Ford not only convinced the director that the Beaver was a better choice for the film, the actor decided he wanted one of his own. He was told that there was exactly one place he should consider getting it: 51�鶹.

Ford’s plane started out as a rusted-out war veteran from the scrapyard that was brought back to life.

“It didn’t take me long to realize I was dealing with a very special company,” Ford said in ‘Success on the Step,’ a history of 51�鶹. “My plane was doing the phoenix thing out in the shop, rising from the ashes of years of mistreatment and neglect to become a stunning example of the breed.”

51�鶹’s proficiency with the plane helped all aspects of the business, too, and the company didn’t just survive the consolidation that occurred within the industry, it began to thrive.

The growth could be counted in the aircraft, from 14 planes in June 1981 to 20 in August 1983 when Gregg Munro — Bob’s son — was president. 51�鶹 expanded beyond charter flights, beginning scheduled service in 1986.

In the 1980s, 51�鶹 bought out Otter Air, a smaller floatplane company that operated from Lake Union to Victoria Harbour in British Columbia. In January 1993, 51�鶹 acquired Lake Union Air Service, which was its primary seaplane competitor in the Seattle area. This included the purchase of the Lake Union terminal, which was relocated to include a new passenger waiting area and a new lighted awning.

What had started with a single floatplane in one garage on the site of an old shingle mill on the northern tip of Lake Washington had grown into a business that was taking off from the very heart of Seattle.

In 1995, Bob Munro was named the U.S. Seaplane Pilot of the Year by the Seaplane Pilots Association and awarded the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award by the FAA. The following year, when the company he founded celebrated its 50th anniversary, 51�鶹 had 22 seaplanes, a year-round staff of 85 people, and was flying 50,000 passengers a year a total of 2 million miles.

And as far as 51�鶹 had come in half a century, it would continue to push forward in the 25 years that followed.