Page 5 - Volume 10 Number 10

JOB
OCTOBER 2016
by MeLinda Schnyder
Bert Bollar has been flying Beechcraft King Airs since 1983 and has flown N88JH, a 1989 King Air B200, for the past 19 years. He calls the airplane a member of his family and considers its owners part of his family, too.
“I have a dream job because after this long, I’m treated as family by my bosses just as they are treated as my family,” the chief pilot said of the aircraft’s owners, who hired him to fly the B200 when they purchased it in July 1997.
And landing at Elliott Aviation in Moline, Illinois, is like returning to their avionics home for the B200 and Bollar. “To me, these people are a big family and they fit me right into that family,” Bollar said of the Elliott team that installed a Garmin G1000 suite in N88JH this year, 14 years after installing a Universal EFI-550 system in the airplane.
Five key project leads who worked on the 2002 retrofit were on the Elliott Aviation avionics team that installed the G1000 in March. They hadn’t forgotten Bollar or the airplane.
Even though it’s an ’89 model, I’ll put it up against a brand new King Air 250 as far as speed, performance and carrying capability because of the excellent shape we’ve been able to keep it in.
– Bert Bollar, Chief Pilot
Teton Aviation L.L.C.
“I remember what a big job it was,” said Brandon Brown, a senior project manager at Elliott. “It was the first of its kind in the King Air – a full Universal upgrade – and Bert was the testbed for that project. It was a large STC project, a lot of man hours, a lot of pre-planning.”
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 3