Northstar Helicopters

September 27, 2022 – As if glacier trekking wasn't cool enough, Northstar Helicopters has expanded over the last several years to include dog sled, airboat, and most recently, flightseeing tour experiences to their repertoire!

“It’s been great, I think that as many companies would say, May was quite challenging trying to find staff and essentially reopen after two years of not really operating. Northstar is a place where generations of families work and we’ve always had this returning staff every year; whether it’s a sister or brother or cousin. We really lost a lot of our employees because, after two years of being closed, they kind of aged out of the seasonal gig.

"Really we started from scratch this year. We have a few key people in each department that are returners and that really helped, but we just didn’t have the returning staff that we usually do. In 2021, when the cruise ships came back, we hired a skeleton crew but nowhere near what we needed to operate. This year we really got into a good swing of things and feel like next year will just be that much better.

"People are happy to be back and I think this year was special because a lot of these people had their tours canceled for so many years. These are people who have been waiting since 2019. So that’s pretty amazing. I think the cool thing was we started getting a lot of independent travelers, too. We are so excited the cruise ships are back, but it really opened up a new door of travel to Alaska.

"We’re looking forward to taking a breather, but we’re also looking forward to sitting down and talking about how we can improve the operation for next year."

- Chelsea Cushing, Director of Tour Operations