ALASKA'S FLYING TRUCKS.

THESE AIR CARGO AND PASSENGER AIRLINE COMPANIES MOVE PEOPLE AND PRODUCTS EVERYWHERE FROM PETERSBURG TO PRUDHOE BAY TO THE PRIBILOFS.

Air commerce in Alaska carries the equivalent of four times the state's population each year, compared to about 1.7 times the U.S. population carried by air commerce in the other states, according to the Airway Facilities Division of the FAA. Alaskahas at least 409 known airports, according to AirNav.com. That number does not include many of the numerous unrecognized or private landing strips that dot the state's Bush areas. Many an Alaska air transportation company boasts, "If there's a strip long enough for our planes to land, we'll get in there with passengers or freight!"

Uniquely Alaskan

Alaskans depend on air transportation services for business travel, leisure travel and medical-related travel, as well as for mail, groceries and general freight. Unlike many other areas of the nation, rather than being laden with VCRs or televisions destined for a warehouse or department store, a cargo plane headed through the skies of the Last Frontier is probably delivering items that will have an immediate impact upon the lives and livelihoods of its recipients. That's not the only thing that makes Alaska air transportation services and their users unique.

Many Alaskans work and/or live far from the state's road system and depend heavily upon air transportation services. Unlike the easily identifiable business travelers of the Lower 48, there is no typical Alaskan business traveler. Toolboxes and duffel bags are just as common as briefcases among the Alaskan business jet set. Anchorage, Fairbanks, Bethel, Juneau, Nome and Kotzebue serve as the state's five major air transportation hubs for these uniquely Alaskan travelers.

PenAir is the largest commuter airline in Alaska. PenAir regularly provides services to and from Anchorage, Bristol Bay, the Aleutian Islands, Cold Bay and the Pribilofs.

The company provides service to 73 communities throughout Southwest Alaska. The PenAir fleet consists of 42 airplanes. This includes their two Saab 340B aircraft and a Cessna Grand Caravan. PenAir offers scheduled passenger service, cargo shipping ("PenPak" small package express), mail delivery and charter service. Charters are available throughout Alaska, Canada and the United States. Orin D. Seybert is president and Richard Harding is vice president of PenAir.

Bering Air, based in Nome, operates many planes, one of which is a 5-year-old Caravan that is in the process of getting new paint and upgrades. The company also operates five Cessna Grand Caravans. The Bering Air CASA 212 is used for cargo only. It is ideal for building supplies and other bulky items that don't fit in the other aircraft.

Bering Air is pilot-owned and -operated. James Rowe, president and general manager, started Bering Air in 1979. The company now employs over 70 full-time employees as well as 25 village agents.

The company recently added two Robinson R44 helicopters. One of the helicopters is primarily used for local sightseeing, drop-offs for hiking, camping, etc. The other helicopter is currently used by state government agencies as well as local tour companies.

Bering Air works with the Norton Sound Hospital to provide transportation for medical staff when picking up patients from the villages to take them to the hospital in Nome or Anchorage. Bering Air's passenger aircraft can carry a maximum of nine passengers.

Bering Air has spent the last 13 years-since May of 1988-operating flights to Provideniya, Russia. This has not always been easy, but the company has been able to maintain the Russian charter service for those who need it. Now with the new governor of Chukotka-Roman Abramovich-the company has been operating flights to Anadyr on a regular basis.

Serving 14 hubs throughout Western Alaska, Air Cargo Express flies six DC-6s and two C40 6s. The company is strictly an air cargo carrier. Ron McCormick, sales manager for Air Cargo Express, states, "At the present time, Air Cargo Express is the only air service provider of its kind to Port Hayden, which is a hub for 15 rural villages." With Bethel as its largest hub, Air Cargo Express seeks to maintain a steady controlled growth as needed throughout the state.

McCormick remarked, "We fly everything from boats to goats. We've flown reindeer, dog teams, you name it. It's our job to get those types of items to their destinations affordably, carefully and efficiently. We work diligently every day to continue our tradition of superior service and low rates. We welcome competition, as we believe it can only make us a better company."

Northern Air Cargo is 100 percent Alaskan owned. It is also an all woman-owned business. According to Marjorie McLaren, president and COO of Northern Air Cargo, "Our real strength is our long history of service, and the dedicated and talented employees who provide that service." Northern Air Cargo, or NAC, began in 1956 in Alaska as a partnership, and was incorporated in 1970 with Robert Sholton as the sole owner. After his death in 1982, his widow, Rita Sholton, became CEO.

The company's jets and DC-6s can operate on gravel runways. Having a fleet of three Boeing 727-100 freighter aircraft and 13 DC-6 freighter aircraft gives the company the flexibility to respond quickly to customer needs, said McLaren.

NAC serves 18 destinations in the state on a scheduled basis, with five-days-a-week service to most. This year NAC started service via Fairbanks three days a week to Kotzebue and Nome. This service opens up the Nome and Kotzebue markets to Fairbanks' businesses. A recent story on a local Fairbanks TV channel called the new service "back to the future" because long ago those communities were originally served out of Fairbanks.

In June, Northern Air Cargo started three-days-a-week service to St. Paul Island and St. George Island out of Anchorage. With its large aircraft freight service, vehicles, outsized freight, restricted articles (such as paint or car batteries) and other items that cannot go on passenger-carrying aircraft reach these islands more frequently than by barge service. Regular freight service provides a way for fresh fish to reach the market in the freshest state possible.

NAC reaches many communities in Alaska via flagstop and charters. Since Reeve stopped service to Adak and Cold Bay, NAC has served them on a charter or flagstop basis. The company's NACLINK service has an even larger reach. Through it, customers can arrange for movement of freight worldwide.

NAC service is an integral part of life in many villages and cities throughout the state, bringing in mail and freight of all types. NAC brings dogs, dropped from the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for a variety of reasons, back to the Anchorage start. NAG also participates in ALPAR's (Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling) Flying Cans program to reduce waste in the villages. The company utilizes local agents in its scheduled destinations. These businesses provide jobs to local employees. NAC also buys a significant amount of avgas and jet fuel in Bush locations.

McLaren reflected, "While our lengthy history of all-cargo service in the state is pretty remarkable in itself, our aircraft have some colorful histories as well. We have the only two 'swingtail' DC-6 aircraft in the world. Rather than having a large cargo door on the side of the aircraft, the aircraft tail swings open to allow direct in-loading of 65-foot-long pipe and construction materials, boats, vehicles and other outsized freight. One of our DC-6 aircraft was owned by Howard Hughes for about 15 years and had only 14 total hours of time on it when purchased by Northern Air Cargo. Another DC-6 had been utilized as a flying shoe manufacturing plant prior to coming into our fleet. Our fleet is somewhat of a tourist attraction for European and other visitors. Former President Bush stopped by unexpectedly one day several years ago to look at the DC-6s he had seen on his flight into Anchorage."

Era Aviation began scheduled passenger service in May of 1983 and has grown into the second-largest passenger carrier at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (following only Alaska Airlines). From Anchorage, it serves the communities of Kenai, Homer, Valdez, Kodiak, Iliamna, Cordova and seasonal service to Whitehorse, YT. These markets are served with a combination of 50-passenger Convair 580s, 37-passenger deHavilland Dash 8 and 18-passenger deHavilland Twin Otter aircraft. The company also serves 17 Western Alaska communities from its hub in Bethel.

Beyond the scheduled airline service, Era provides contract and charter service, some of it highly specialized. As an example, Era has provided Twin Otters to both the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service configured for smokejumper operations. For the Minerals Management Service, Era has a highly modified, very long-range Twin Otter for marine mammal research over the Beaufort Sea. With the larger aircraft, it provides transportation for all the major tour operators in Alaska; and during the winter, provides up to three Convairs in the Lower 48 moving NCAA College Basketball teams throughout the Midwest and East Coast.

First and foremost, Era seeks to continue providing safe, efficient and economical transportation to the communities it serves, said Paul Landis, senior vice president of fixed wing operations for Era Aviation. Last year, Era added a third deHavilland Dash 8 to the fleet based in a large part on the passenger traffic generated on the Kenai Peninsula. In addition, Era continually evaluates new markets within and outside Alaska. Recently, Era conducted an Internet survey to learn more about transportation requirements to the Russian Far East, specifically related to the oil development activities on Sakalin Island.

"We will meet each customer's aviation needs with the highest level of safety and performance," said Landis. "We will maintain our leadership in the industry by continuously improving our reliability, regulatory compliance and efficiency. Our employees will have a safe and rewarding work environment and we will be a good citizen in all the communities where we do business."

Although Era now has aviation operations worldwide, Anchorage firmly remains the corporate headquarters for the company. Era currently employs over 700 people statewide (both fixed-wing and rotor-wing) from Juneau to Deadhorse. In the past year, Era Aviation donated $330,000 in transportation to nonprofit organizations in the communities it serves. The largest single contribution went to the American Cancer Society to assist passengers traveling to and from Anchorage for specialized treatment. Other recipients included Alaska Shiner Temple, March of Dimes, Make-a-Wish Foundation, Junior Achievement, Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Club and Catholic Social Services.

Readers of Travel & Leisure magazine have voted Alaska Airlines the best carrier in the nation for the year 2001. Alaska Airlines also set a new air cargo record for itself recently, transporting 285,095 pounds of prized Copper River salmon following the first 12-hour opener of the 2001 commercial fishing season. That's 72 percent more than what Alaska Airlines carried out of Cordova last year during the same period. Alaska Airlines jets transported over one million pounds of salmon during the 2001 fishing season alone.

According to Alaska Airlines cargo manager, Keola Pang-Ching, "The best thing about working freight in Alaska is that you know you are touching people's lives. We at Alaska Airlines are very aware of that and take great pride in the fact that we are helping our neighbors throughout the state each and every time a freight shipment is flown out to a rural community."

Arctic Transportation Services has been providing air service to residents of Western Alaska since the early 1950s. It was then that Wilfred Ryan Sr. began flying occasional charters between Unalakleet and Kaltag. ATS is now a company with 16 aircraft flying out of seven hub communities that serves 68 villages and employs 65 people.

The company primarily provides bush cargo and mail delivery in scheduled flight operations that center around the communities of Aniak, Bethel, Emmonak, Kotzebue, Nome, St. Marys and Unalakleet.

The Unusual is Usual

When queried as to unusual freight items, destinations or passengers, most of the airline representatives interviewed for this article laughed. In Alaska, the unusual is usual. Alaska Airlines has hauled boxes of bees with a bee handler riding in the jump seat. Air Cargo Express has hauled "goats to boats, dog teams, and reindeer." Northern Air Cargo is very familiar with "freight that barks." Another gentleman, who preferred to remain off-the-record remarked, "We fly everything from butts to boxes, passengers to freight, that is." And so it is, Alaskan air transportation services are as unique as the great state they serve.