Dedicated to rotors

Mike Renz, President and CEO, Analar Corporation, on the challenges in providing helicopter charter, maintenance and management services, and running a unique, dedicated helicopter FBO

AH: Mike, I was hugely impressed to hear that Analar Corporation has been around for over 40 years. How did it all begin?

MR: Analar was incorporated back in 1978 so, yes, we’ve been operating for over four decades now, though of course there have been some huge changes.

Analar began as the corporate flight department for a major Fortune 500 company, Church & Dwight, a major household goods company. Probably the product they are best known for in the US is their Arm & Hammer baking soda. Analar was set up as the group’s corporate flight department in 1978.

To reflect a bit on my history and career, I got my start in aviation as a young man with a passion for aviation, especially helicopters in the late 1970’s, early 80’s. I started out as a maintenance technician and then shortly after obtained my commercial pilot license. I was working for a company called Ramapo Helicopters. We were one of the largest helicopter maintenance MRO shops in the Northeast US where we maintained the?Arm & Hammer helicopters. The company (Arm & Hammer) were interested in my unique ability to be a pilot but also maintain their helicopters.

In 1986, because I was dual rated as a?helicopter technician and a commercial rated pilot with an Instrument rating, Arm & Hammer interviewed me for the position of Director of Maintenance and Helicopter Captain. I made the jump and moved from the MRO business to the corporate aviation side. It was shortly after that I expressed interest in also flying their fixed wing plane, a Cheyenne turboprop. I went to Flight Safety International for the training and soon became a pilot for the fixed wing as well. We had a great run from 1986 to 1993.

Things started to unfold a bit and in 1993, the CFO decided that the company could do without the helicopters and the aviation department and decided to downsize the flight department. They kept me on because I was dual rated and let the other pilots and staff go. So I ran things in what remained of the flight department for another two years. Since 1979 we had been certified as a Part 135 operation, so we could always do charters for the general public when Arm & Hammer weren’t using the aircraft. This helped generate revenue for the company.

In 1995, the CFO convinced the Board to scrap what remained of the flight department and I was about to be terminated. They offered me a very attractive severance package, but I saw another side of the situation that most would shy away from. I was thinking that because we already had a steady book of charter business and I was able to maintain and fly the aircraft, why not purchase the Analar name, the company and its aircraft and give it a shot on my own.

So, we worked out a deal which gave me the company and the aircraft, and I started off on my own that same year (1995). I had been doing maintenance on the side for a number of folks so we started with a reasonable amount of maintenance business already in the company.

AH: How did you get from there to building the largest public-use heliport in the US at Kearny, New Jersey?

MR: We soon had quite a reasonable charter and helicopter maintenance business. In 1997, I started an operation in the Bahamas called Paradise Island Helicopters, which was the exclusive carrier for the Atlantis Hotel and Ocean Club. We flew high-rollers to and from Miami and Fort Lauderdale to the casino at the Hotel Atlantis. We were running a substantial charter and maintenance business in Princeton as well but found the time being away from my core business not so productive.

Then, in 2003, I decided that what the market really needed in the New York area was a helicopter-only FBO. Helicopters tend to be treated as second-class citizens at business jet FBOs. They take on 50 to 100 litres of fuel where a G650 will take on 4,000 litres. You have to remember that corporate New York has one of the highest concentrations of helicopters in the world!

We first had the idea to start a helicopter airline and I started the process and built a business plan with the help of two experienced aviation professionals to help pave the way. One of my collegues was an expert in airline travel and the other an expert in marketing. We started looking for some land to build what would be our base of operations for our airline. We needed a fair amount of acreage in order to build the right size hangar. We found a parcel of land which was ideal for our heliport, so we began construction. Kearny is a great location. By helicopter, it is only minutes out of New York, which is where all the action is. So we could give the customer a really well-priced charter rate. As soon as we could, we transferred all our Analar Charter helicopters from Princeton to Kearny and we built an initial 30,000 square feet of hangar space. Later we built Phase II with additional ramp space, a 10,000 sq ft office complex, and an additional 44,000 sq ft of hangar space.

We now have around 35 helicopters based at our FBO, with eight of those being operated by Analar. The heliport has sight-seeing ops and charter, and we have a booming JetA fuel base there. The other advantage is that we can hot-refuel, which means the pilots can keep their rotors turning. That is a really big benefit on a helicopter, because you don’t want to run up the cycles by having to stop and start on a bunch of short trips. This benefits the economics and keeps maintenance costs down for the aircraft.

That can add up to a lot of savings for the owner in terms of maintenance costs, and helps to avoid a huge amount of wear and tear on the engines. Again, this significantly lowers the direct operating cost.

AH: How difficult was it to find the property at Kearny?

MR: It was a battle and quite troublesome. As I mentioned earlier, we were originally planning to start a helicopter-based airline, so that was dictating what size property we needed. The idea was to use larger helicopters to fly from Manhattan to JFK, EWR and LaGuardia. We spent a couple of years building a business plan, but the more we looked at it, the less the economics worked out. It would have been break-even at best. So we shifted gears and focused instead on a public-use heliport where we could offer hangar space, sell jet fuel at a retail level and offer maintenance services and crew amenities.

Around 2003, we located a parcel of property that we could have used, but it did not work out. Too close to a school and the local community wasn’t having it. However, a client of ours had a parcel of land he was willing to lease us that was part of a heavy industrial/warehouse type of environment. That gave us approximately nine acres to build the type of facility we needed. The process took a few years and we had to make many land improvements.?

One of our biggest challenges was that to meet the 100-year flood plan, we had to raise the entire property by 13 feet. It was a huge effort but it really paid off when Hurricane Sandy blew through in 2012. If we hadn’t raised the property we would have suffered some serious flood issues. As it was, we came out unscathed with very little damage, if any.

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