About K2

K2 Aviation has over 28 years experience in flying climbers and sightseers in the Talkeetna area, coupled with Rust's Flying Service's nearly 50 years experience as an air taxi. Kitty and Kimbal Forest founded the business in 1980 operating it for one year. Jim and Julie Okonek owned and operated K2 from 1981 until 1996 when Todd and Suzanne Rust bought the business.  The Rusts expanded the flight seeing side of the business by innovating with using turbo Otters for glacier landings, offering a quieter operation and reducing the carbon footprint in the pristine area of Denali National Park.  Today, Suzanne Rust manages the Talkeetna based business with its fleet of DeHavilland Otters and Beavers, a Piper Cherokee, and a Navajo Chieftain. K2 received the highest score on the recent National Park Service concessionaire proposal for landings within Denali National Park. K2 Aviation also received the coveted Gold Award from the Anchorage Daily News in the Air Taxi category.

A bit of history of Rust's Flying Service:

It all began in 1963, when retired Air Force Colonel and WWII vet Henry "Hank" Rust founded Rust's Flying Service using a Piper Super Cub (two-seat airplane) to fly hunters and fishermen to remote areas of Alaska. As times changed, so did this little business. Rust's Flying Service added airplanes to accommodate more fishermen, hunters, flightseers and Alaska's burgeoning tourist industry. Over the next 40 years, Rust's fleet grew to include nine seaplanes, including Cessna 206's, deHavilland Beavers and deHavilland Turbine Otters. The types of trips offered also changed from just hunting and fishing, still a core business, to include an assortment of flightseeing tours of Alaska's most popular destinations such as Mt. McKinley, Columbia Glacier and bear viewing tours in Katmai National Park, flights to wilderness cabins and remote upscale lodges.