Mining boom sparks new joint venture company for air charters

Discovery Air Inc. subsidiaries Air Tindi Ltd. and Great Slave Helicopters Ltd. have formed a new partnership — Auyuittuq Aviation — with a group of Inuit shareholders from Nunavut’s Kivalliq and Baffin regions of Nunavut to cash in on the growing mining industry in the Baffin region, where work at projects like Baffinland Iron Mine’s Mary River project and Peregrine Diamonds Ltd.’s Chidliak property is expanding.

“The mining and exploration industries in Nunavut are growing rapidly and new opportunities are being created almost daily,” said Simon Merkosak of Pond Inlet, Auyuittuq Aviation’s president, in a Sept. 26 news release. “It is critical that our local businesses also evolve and expand so that we have the resources and expertise to serve these industries if our local and territorial economies, as well as Nunavummiut, are to benefit from this new period of prosperity.”

The majority Inuit-owned joint venture will provide rotary and fixed-wing charter services with minority owners Air Tindi and Great Slave Helicopters conducting all flight operations, the news release said.

“We are proud to partner with national and industry leaders in the aviation field in this new venture,” Merkosak said. “The expertise of our partners allows us to offer the best of both worlds in the aviation industry drawing on their fleets of approximately 75 helicopters and 21 airplanes.”

Auyuittuq Aviation will primarily operate out of its main office in Iqaluit where it will transport workers and freight for mining companies and seek contact work for mining and mineral exploration companies and the Government of Nunavut.

“Discovery Air subsidiaries Great Slave Helicopters and Air Tindi have a proven track record operating in the harsh environment of Canada’s North and creating wealth for our Aboriginal partners,” said Discovery Air’s executive vice-president Chuck Parker.

Parker is also president of Air Tindi, whose joint venture with Taloyak’s Aqsarniq Aviation won the GN’s medevac contract for the Kitikmeot region, which the Cambridge Bay company Adlair Aviaton Ltd. has challenged in an appeal to the Nunavummi Nangminiqaqtunik Ikajuuti contracting appeals board.