Floatplane Service Has Waves Of Business

Gorgeous weather marked our arrival at Seattle’s Lake Union on a recent afternoon and, predictably, the water was crowded with yachts, sea kayaks and vintage wooden boats.

A mesmerizing sight, if not for the fact that Lake Union doubles as a busy landing strip for Kenmore Air floatplanes, and we were descending at 80 mph, looking for a place to park our six-passenger de Havilland Beaver.

Unperturbed by the marine traffic, pilot Scott Selby split the 200-foot difference between two converging sailboats and set the plane down with the gentleness of a maternity-ward nurse.

I recall trying the same trick in a toy-congested bathtub almost four decades ago. That’s how long the single-engine de Havillands (and their miniature replicas) have been around.

But Kenmore Air owner Bob Munro’s memory of landing floatplanes goes back even further. He and two partners began the business in 1946 with a two-seat, 36-horsepower Aeronca-K.

From that modest start Munro built the largest fullservice seaplane operation in the world, carrying 50,000 passengers a year some 2 million air miles.

Flying out of Lake Union and its home base on Lake Washington, Kenmore Air offers year-round service to the San Juan Islands and Victoria, as well as seasonal and charter flights.

Besides ordinary passengers like us, Kenmore gets celebrities (Robert Goulet sang “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” to a dispatch operator several years ago), along with requests to transport everything from movie props to unarmed torpedoes.

Our one-day family excursion to Victoria and back was mundane by Kenmore standards - but a memory of a lifetime for us.

The ride itself was a little bumpier than airliner cruising, and we were issued earplugs upon boarding. But there’s no comparing the view from 2,000 feet. I actually saw someone swinging a golf club on a course near Port Townsend.

Our “jet set” adventure didn’t come cheap.

Round-trip adult tickets to Victoria run $149 ($89 for children), compared with Horizon’s $79 bargain rate. But Horizon lands at Victoria Airport, 40 minutes and cab fare from downtown, while the Kenmore flight took only 50 minutes and dropped us off one block from The Empress, Victoria’s landmark harborside hotel.

And best of all, not once during the flight did our sometimes-impatient 10-and 13-year-old kids ask, “Are we there yet?”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: For more information about Kenmore Air, call 1-800-543-9595, or e-mail kenair@seattleonline.com.