About our Company

East West Helicopters is located in Salmon Arm, BC. We have been in business since 1997 and were re-incorporated under our current name (East West Transportation (2000) Inc.) in May 2000 due to new ownership. East West Transportation (2000) Inc. is an accident free company.

In 2009 East West Helicopters met the requirements for certification in the SAFE Companies program through the BC Forest Safety Council and maintains that certification with yearly audits.

East West Helicopters uses Bell 214B1's for heavy lift operations. The majority of East West Helicopters work has been in the logging industry and firefighting. This is repetitive lift flying with a two hundred foot long line, giving our pilots an enormous amount of long line experience.

East West has also completed many precision lift jobs. These include the installation of Ski towers, cement work, mining equipment moves and Aircraft recovery.

East West arrives at each project with a fully self-contained service facility. Our engineering staff is well versed in major component changes in the field, which limits helicopter down time significantly. East West also supplies the aircrew with four wheel drive pickups and provides its own tanker for helicopter refueling.

About our Aircraft

This ship was designed in the early seventies as an improved version of the model 205A-1. The 214B proved its increased abilities in 1975, when it set five time-to- climb and altitude records, including sustained altitude in horizontal flight of 29,760 feet. While not a record, the 214B1 does have a service ceiling of 20,000 feet and can hover out of ground effect (at full gross weight on a standard day) at an impressive 13,400 feet. This is more than twice the density altitude the 205A-1 can handle.

The 214B1 is basically a lift machine, that can take up to 8,000 pounds on its cargo hook. Its principle applications are in general and power line construction, forestry (logging), and firefighting particularly in the intermountain western areas of North America where the ship's altitude capabilities makes it desirable.

About our Crew

The East West Flight crew generally consists of two pilots an Engineer and an apprentice.

Cliff White – Pilot Bell 214B
License # CH146858

Cliff White has been flying for twenty-five years logging more than 16000 hours on various types of Helicopters. He has extensive long line experience starting in 1991 on Seismic in Mexico. Cliff flew with Helicopter International (now called Winco) for seven years on Power line construction. Cliff has been flying for East West Helicopters since 1998. He has logged more than 6500 hours on the Bell 214B1, most of which has been long line related work. Cliff also serves as the Chief Pilot at East West Helicopters.

Ron Batty – Pilot Bell 214B
License # H137018

Ron has been flying for twenty-four years logging more than 15000 hours on helicopters. He started with seismic operations in the early 1990's then moved to heli-logging in 1993 with various companies. Ron has been involved with various steelsetting projects and precision equipment moves for East West.

Glen Boyes – Director of Maintenance
License # 791711

Glen has been the chief engineer for East West Helicopters for 7 years.

Our Policies

The Management of East West Helicopters is determined to promote and provide safe and healthy working conditions and attitudes within the Company. It shall be the responsibility of management to provide a safe worksite and to establish and maintain adequate standards of maintenance of site and equipment. To ensure that physical and health hazards are guarded against or eliminated and to develop work procedures conducive to a safe, healthy and accident-free workplace.

It shall be the responsibility of every Manager, Supervisor and Chargehand to ensure that workers are properly trained and instructed to do their work safely, to enforce safe work procedures and regulations, and to correct all unsafe activities or conditions.

It shall be the duty of every worker to follow proper safe work procedures, to observe all regulations pertaining to their work and to cooperate in attaining the objective of a safe, healthy, accident-free workplace.

Everyone is expected to correct or report unsafe conditions and activities and to know and follow all rules and safe work procedures.

Keith Watson
President

For a pdf of our safety program outline, please click here.

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