Intermountain Aviation

Intermountain Aviation was a US airline established (in 1961) and secretly owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Intermountain's non-CIA business included flying smokejumpers for the United States Forest Service (USFS), flying freight (including to places like Alaska's North Slope) restocking fish by air and similar activities. But from the mid-1960s to the peak of the Vietnam War, CIA business accounted for 60–70% of the company's operations, and Intermountain was one of the three largest CIA "proprietary" companies, along with Air America and the CIA's insurance activities. Intermountain had its own airport and maintenance base at Marana, Arizona, near Tucscon, known today as Pinal Airpark, but then as Marana Air Park. Intermountain was authorized to conduct maintenance of any kind on any type of aircraft. The airline was a commercial operator, also known as an uncertificated carrier, authorized to operate large aircraft, but not as a common carrier (i.e. operating on a contract basis only) and thus escaped most oversight by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now defunct Federal agency that, at the time, tightly regulated almost all US commercial air transport.

In 1972 the CIA decided to reduce aviation activities, leading it to sell Intermountain in stages, first its commercial airline activities in 1973 (to Rosenbalm Aviation). In June 1974, CIA ownership was revealed; the CIA had earlier denied any involvement. Evergreen Helicopters bought the remaining Intermountain assets in early 1975, merging them with Montana-based CAB-certificated Johnson Flying Service, which it bought in the same year, forming Evergreen International Airlines (EIA). EIA ceased operations in 2013.

Intermountain's overt capabilities can be seen in a marketing film. See External links.

An indirect legacy of the company is Sierra Pacific Airlines, a small Tucson-based charter airline owned by for many years by the former Intermountain president, Gar Thorsrud. Sierra Pacific also flies for the USFS with a similar pale blue and black livery to Intermountain.