Columbia Basin Helicopter, Inc.

Columbia Basin Helicopter, Inc., doing business as David McCarty, is a La Grande, Oregon–based small business that provides specialized aerial services — wildland fire suppression, single-engine airtanker operations, aerial herbicide application, invasive species treatment, seeding, equipment transport, and related vegetation management — exclusively as a prime contractor to federal land management and emergency response agencies. The vendor competes predominantly full-and-open (no set-aside designation on 70% of recent awards), though it holds small-business set-aside vehicles and has received total-small-business set-aside delivery orders; it is classified under primary NAICS 488190 (Other Support Activities for Air Transportation) and PSC 1560 (Aircraft and Airframe Structural Components) for helicopter services and 115310 (Support Activities for Forestry) for herbicide application work.

Customer concentration is acute and regionally anchored. The vendor's top five federal customers account for 74% of awards by count; by combined potential value, the portfolio is dominated by the Bureau of Land Management's Idaho Region ($834.5 million across 17 awards) — a single-award indefinite delivery contract for Single Engine Airtanker flight services valued at $400 million that runs through May 2024 (and therefore faces imminent recompete). The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), housed within the Department of Agriculture Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management directorate, places 87 delivery orders ($159 million combined potential value) against multiple IDIQs. The BLM's Oregon-Washington Region (24 awards, $35.7 million) and the Forest Service's Intermountain Region (16 awards, $51.5 million) round out the major customers. This concentration creates acute recompete exposure: the $400 million BLM SEAT contract completion date of May 21, 2024 has passed in the source timeline; additionally, multiple forest-service and NIFC vehicles carry completion dates of December 31, 2029 and 2033–2034, anchoring the vendor's pipeline through the near term.

The vendor holds an extensive parent-vehicle footprint across federal land management. It operates under the Type 1 Helicopter Support Services 2025-2034 IDIQ with NIFC (25 task orders, $9.9 million combined value), a $50 million multiple-award vehicle awarded January 1, 2025, supporting wildland fire suppression, aerial application, and natural resource management. It also holds a $50 million single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (Land Management Integrated Resources, or LMIR) with the USDA Forest Service Acquisitions office (April 2023 through March 2033) for helicopter-based aerial application services across public lands. A $24.25 million multiple-award IDIQ with the BLM Oregon-Washington Region (September 26, 2023 through September 25, 2028) provides non-personal herbicide application services across approximately 75,000 acres annually. Additional parent vehicles include multiple IDIQs with the Forest Service's Intermountain Region for helicopter-based aerial application ($2 million ceiling, September 2022 through August 2027) and prior NIFC helicopter-support and Type-2 contracts. It also operates under a $250,000 miscellaneous heavy equipment VIPR I-BPA with NIFC for West Zone Regions 5 and 6 and a parallel $250,000 agreement for Region 6 Pacific Northwest, both firm-fixed-price total small business set-asides.

Activity has grown steadily. Awards per year climbed from 18 in 2022 to 28 in 2025; the source captures only three awards in 2026 (through May 20), but this reflects the snapshot date rather than a decline. The combined potential value of $1.16 billion across 205 awards reflects heavy reliance on high-ceiling IDVs, particularly the $400 million BLM SEAT contract. SCI-reported federal service-contract invoicing totaled $12.4 million across FY2022–FY2024 (9 prime records), with FY2023 the peak year at $5.1 million invoiced. On those SCI-reportable contracts, the vendor fielded between 2.4 and 17.8 FTEs, with wide variance likely reflecting seasonal fire-suppression demand. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI contracts ranged from $128.72/hr at the 10th percentile to a median of $499.98/hr and $993.61/hr at the 90th percentile, reflecting a mix of entry-level and senior helicopter crew labor. SCI data shows zero subcontractor-hours share on prime contracts: Columbia Basin Helicopter builds its own delivery teams rather than relying on subs. The vendor has never held a subcontractor position in the source data (0 of 205 awards are sub awards).

Recent delivery-order activity under NIFC's Type 1 Helicopter Support Services 2025-2034 IDIQ is representative. In the three-month window from July through September 2025 alone, the vendor received 23 firm fixed-price delivery orders totaling approximately $10.3 million, each with completion dates of December 31, 2029, and individual ceiling values ranging from $248,151 to $564,549. A $26,391 delivery order for aerial services from the Forest Service (May 20, 2026) shows continued task-order flow. Major vehicles also carried significant September 2025 issuances: the NIFC Type 1 contract received four orders on September 1, 2025 alone, collectively worth $2 million, for wildland fire suppression and vegetation management across La Grande, Oregon. The BLM Oregon-Washington Region issued a $89,992 delivery order on September 3, 2025 for the Crazy Creek herbicide application, supporting the company's core aerial application capability. This dense, ongoing order flow under mature IDVs indicates stable, predictable revenue but also reflects the vendor's dependency on federal wildland-management spending and its concentration risk should those agencies' budgets or priorities shift.

Aerial Application, Aerial Forest Fire Fighting, Precision Lift