Coast Guard aviators in Belle Chasse get a new skipper today

 

Rusty Costanza/The Times-Picayune

Command of Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, home to five MH-65C Dolphin helicopters such as this one, changes hands this morning.

Almost two years after he assumed command of about 120 Coast Guard personnel and their five of MH-65C Dolphin search and rescue helicopters, Cmdr. Frederick Riedlin hands the reigns of Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans to Cmdr. Michael Brandhuber. The 10 a.m. ceremony will be at the agency’s air station in Belle Chasse, which became a hub for Coast Guard helicopters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Brandhuber becomes the latest in the line of Coast Guard officers to oversee the aviation operation since the agency first established an air station at Lake Pontchartrain in 1955. Since then, the Coast Guard estimates its New Orleans-area flight crews have saved more than 5,500 people, making it one of its busiest air stations.

The Coast Guard’s aviation compound has been located inside the Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse since 1957.

The air crews respond to search-and-rescue calls in a region from the Florida panhandle to Memphis, Tenn., to the Louisiana-Texas border to deep within the Gulf of Mexico, home to thousands of offshore platforms.

They also fly an array of other missions, including law enforcement – and regularly provide aerial security over New Orleans parade routes during Carnival season.

Read more here:  http://www.nola.com