Customer Spotlight: Kenmore Air
Imagine drinking a cup of fresh brewed coffee, walking down a misty dock on Seattle’s Lake Washington. It’s early morning and the Canadian Geese soar above the fleet of salmon fishermen. You climb into a beautiful de Havilland Beaver seaplane and take off towards the Space Needle. You fly by Seattle’s skyline, heading North towards the San Juan Islands. Looking down over the Washington ferries and a pod of Orca’s. At 4,000 feet you can see the snowy mountains on the Olympic Peninsula, Puyallup tribal lands, and mist-shrouded fjords. After 50 minutes in heaven, we glide along the calm waters of Friday harbor, as we descend upon the relaxing and scenic backdrop of the San Juan Islands.
If you’re thinking that that’s an experience enjoyed by people with money and access. You’re wrong. That is the experience Kenmore Air offers for $169 one way and is enjoyed by 60,000 passengers a year.
We were lucky enough to team up with Kenmore Air to create a solution to their unique fueling situation.
They had purchased a 1,000-gallon TransFueler fuel trailer about 7 years ago and was using it to fuel grounded aircraft. They wanted us to engineer a way for them to refuel their aircraft directly at the dock, while keeping the fuel trailer on land at an environmentally safe distance of about 200 feet. We decided to build them a multi tank system that would be used as the dispensing equipment for the existing 1,000-gallon tank, sitting 75 feet away from the dock, where the fuel truck would be able to access. Then run another 125-foot hose from the dispensing equipment to the seaplane. We equipped a 35 gallon per minute pump and 2-inch hose to achieve an acceptable flow rate.
This new fueling system allows Kenmore Air to keep their aircraft in the Air or Water, providing more flights to the Pacific Northwest. We are very proud, at TransFueler, to be part of a project that helps improve the community and the environment.