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Courtesy of Bob Hajdukovich

Courtesy of Bob Hajdukovich

The president and CEO of Frontier AlaskA, Bob Hajdukovich, recently recalled the rise of a regional airline, Frontier Flying Service and today’s challenges of an aviation company facing soaring oil prices.

With a twinkle, Bob Hajdukovich began, “One fall day, Dad (John Hajdukovich Sr.) was out hunting with his riverboat in Minto Flats, when his motor blew up. Seeing Jess Bachner, he hitched a ride back to Fairbanks in Bachner’s Super Cub. Impressed with the 15 minutes back to Fairbanks rather than 8 1/2 hours by boat, Dad immediately decided to turn his boat in for an airplane!”

“Most people take ground school,” Hajdukovich explained, “then the pilot’s test, followed by a solo, later passengers. Not Dad. In 1970, while he was in Florida at the Piper dealership buying his first plane, Dad figured his first solo would be returning from Florida to Fairbanks. However the weather and sheer distance made the return a harrowing trip.”  In Fairbanks, Hajdukovich then sold the Hajdukovich Building, and became a Cessna dealer. He began buying and selling planes and training pilots, the beginning of Airco.

For more than 20 years, big-game guide Dick McIntyre operated Frontier Flying, ferrying his clients to his hunting camps. In 1974, Hajdukovich Sr. bought the company. Frontier flew three or four single engine planes to the Brooks Range, contracting from Wien, a scheduled airliner.

“It was the heyday,” Hajdukovich explained, “of big air carriers. The Civil Aeronautics Board selected who flew which routes, giving an airline like Wien in Alaska a monopoly.”

After the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, Frontier got Department of Transportation approval to offer scheduled flights to the public. “The next year we got our first Navajo, a twin-engine plane,” Hajdukovich said. By the mid-1980s, the company employed 12 people, including four family members.

By 1988, Hajdukovich had graduated from the University of San Diego with a major in business and a minor in computers. “When I returned,” he smiled wryly, “Dad made me the office manager. For the next five years, I sat across from him at his desk, learning every facet from talking to the banks, the IRS, the airports as well as the governor.

“Over the next three years, there were a couple of bank failings, one in which we had an account. The F.D.I.C. wanted to repossess our planes. I was only 22; it was very stressful.”

At that time, all of Frontier’s accounts payable were on one computer disk and accounts receivable were on another. “I started developing programs for everything,” Hajdukovich said, “from accounting to flight management, dispatching and manifesting. Since then, with that original database language, we have built Frontier’s Web site, reservations, flight tracking and other systems.

“Computers must handle repetitious functions and leave employees free to make decisions.” he said. “I have fostered efficiency and safety. For over 20 years, we have had no fatal accidents.” In markets like Anaktuvuk Pass where Frontier served, it became a dominant carrier by the 1990s.   In 1996, the Federal Aviation Administration mandated that smaller air carriers like Frontier had to comply with more stringent safety standards. Hajdukovich said deciding whether to comply was one of his toughest decisions. “In 13 months, we changed maintenance, dispatch, flying, training people, everything, costing us $1 million that we didn’t have but giving us the potential to grow.”

By 1997 to help offset those conversion expenses, Frontier began looking at a slightly larger, 19-seater airplane, the Beechcraft 1900. Four years later, Frontier was leasing six 1900s from Raytheon Company. But after Sept. 11, 2001, it became untenable to buy the insurance required by Raytheon. When other efforts failed, Hajdukovich turned to First National Bank of Alaska, which financed the aircraft, allowing Frontier to continue.

A change in the federal mail subsidy in 2003 led to a buyout of a tenacious competitor, Cape Smythe, adding 12 more aircraft. By 2006, Hageland Aviation Services, a large competitor based in Southwest Alaska, who also served Aniak, St Mary’s, Nome, Kotzebue, Bethel, Unalakleet and Barrow, remained.

“We were looking to replace our PA-31 fleet with a newer but expensive aircraft like the Cessna Caravan. Hageland had 14. Conversely, they liked our operating system,” Hajdukovich said. “To make an enduring airline, we combined forces.”

Hajdukovich is the CEO and president of Frontier AlaskA, responsible for the operations of both airlines, as well as the CEO of Frontier Flying Service and its director of operations.

“The Frontier-Hageland combination will make this airline one that can last,” Hajdukovich said, despite rising fuel prices and challenged village economies

“My approach,” he continued, “has always been to tell it like it is so that my banker, and everyone else, knows what to expect.

“Frontier,” he explained, “is not an airline just flying businessmen from point A to point B. We provide service to the people of Alaska with whom my grandfather, Milo Hajdukovich, and ‘Uncle’ John Hajdukovich, first traded. It is very satisfying to know that we’re part of that original lifeline.”