A publicly traded aviation company in Portland, Ore., has gone silent as reports swirl that it has defaulted on its debt, Oregon Live reported yesterday. Erickson Inc. failed to make its quarterly $14 million payment to holders of its $355 million worth of bonds on Nov. 1. Observers expected company executives to address the uncertainty last Thursday, when it was scheduled to release quarterly financial results. But Thursday came and went with no earnings and no explanation. Clearly something is up, and speculation has run the gamut from a debt-restructuring deal that would give bondholders equity in Erickson to a straight bankruptcy filing. The one public statement the company did make last week only deepened the mystery. Erickson announced that two of its directors had left its board. Funds and companies controlled by Morgan own more than 54 percent of Erickson's stock. After three years of sustained losses, executives acknowledged this summer that the company needs to restructure. Erickson, famous in aviation circles as the only supplier of the Skycrane heavy-lift helicopter, employs about 700 people, many of them in Portland and in Southern Oregon. The company has lost $162 million since 2014. It lost a key $50 million firefighting contract with the U.S. Forest Service last spring.
