Alaska is a place where the small airplane still rules.
May 2015-
Last winter, a friend out of Fairbanks invited me to come work as a volunteer for the Yukon Quest sled dog race, where intrepid mushers guide their teams over a thousand-mile course through the Yukon in the dead of winter. (Think Iditarod on steroids.)
For a million reasons, the volunteering part of the trip didn’t materialize, but I did get a good look into how people use their airplanes in what is truly The Last Frontier.
For us folks in the Lower 48, Alaskan aviation is mind-boggling. With General Aviation air traffic dwindling in most American flyways, you’d never know it by looking into the skies over Alaska. Aviation is a huge part of living in America’s 49th state.
It’s hard to go anywhere in Alaska and not find yourself in the company of at least someone who’s earned a private pilot certificate. There are more pilots per capita than any other state, and probably the world. It’s not unusual to find yourself in the midst of half a dozen pilots, even when standing in line at the post office.
Part of the reason aviation is alive and well in Alaska is plain and simple: there just aren’t any roads. Sure, there are lots of car thoroughfares around the few larger collections of civilization, like Anchorage or Fairbanks or Juneau. In these towns, you can drive around all you want, visit the grocery store, pick up your mail, even get yourself a speeding ticket if you’ve a mind to.
But you often can’t leave those towns in your car. The state capital of Juneau, for example, is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. You can only come and go by ferry or by airplane.
And even if you could drive to other destinations, maybe you wouldn’t want to. The distances are great. Alaska is the largest state in the United States in land area at 663,268 square miles—over twice the size of Texas, the next largest state. Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries.
Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the combined area of the next three largest states: Texas, California and Montana. It’s also larger than the combined area of the 22 smallest states in America.
Bottom line: Alaska is almost unimaginably huge. Even if you could drive places, it could take days to get there. But not with an airplane.
So it’s not surprising to see airplanes going everywhere, in all kinds of conditions, day and night. In fact, during the long daylight hours of summer (in some portions of Alaska the sun doesn’t set), it’s nothing to see airplanes taking off for remote destinations at 3:00 in the morning. In broad daylight.
A lot of these airplanes are carrying groceries, supplies, people, even U.S. mail to literally hundreds of little dots of civilization across the vast bush. Everything from Cubs to Caravans are working to keep life in Alaska going.
Of course, lots of these airplanes are flying purely for recreation, heading off to enjoy the lakes, forests, mountains, tundra and coastlines that are prolific in the state.
Wanna learn to fly floats? Alaska has more than three million lakes. In fact, if you arrive in Anchorage at the international airport, you’ll find Lake Hood, the largest seaplane base in the world, across the street from the terminal.
Wanna land on a beach and catch salmon right out of the ocean? Alaska has more coastline than all the other states combined.
Wanna learn mountain flying? Alaska has uncountable mountain ranges, including Mount McKinley (also known as Denali), the tallest peak in North America.
Wanna learn to land on glaciers? (Yes, you can actually receive dual instruction to land on creaking, shifting ice!) Glaciers cover some 16,000 square miles of Alaska—more than 100,000 of them. That’s half of the glaciers in the world.
Wanna learn to fly in the wilderness? Highly skilled local flight instructors will introduce you to a whole new universe. You might not even see any runways while you’re learning the backcountry. (It shouldn’t surprise you if your instructor says, “Hey, that little ridgeline looks like there’s about 600 feet—what do you say we give ‘er a try?”)
For many Alaskans, airplanes are the only way they travel. I have a friend who lived in the little town of Gustavus (population 450, give or take) down in the southeast part of the state. It rains so much there that the area qualifies as a temperate rainforest.
Many mornings, the air was filled with water—but in Alaska, you can’t always let that stop you. He would load up the kids into his ski plane and head off into “town”—Juneau—for a pizza, or to buy a new chainsaw, or to grab a load of books and magazines to enjoy at home by the fire.
He had a billion hours of flying back and forth under low ceilings as an everyday practice, something many of us in the Lower 48 shy away from. But so often a difficult forecast is simply life and aviation in Alaska.
One time, flying out of Fairbanks, a pilot needed to make it into Circle City, a tiny settlement of a hundred brave souls who live a scant 50 miles short of the Arctic Circle, to pick up a doctor who needed to respond to a remote medical emergency.
No airplane had made it into Circle that day. High winds and conditions nearly at minimums had foiled other attempts by some pretty seasoned bush pilots. Still, there was a medical emergency and my pilot vowed to give it his best effort.
As we neared our destination, he throttled back to about 60 knots, dropped his big flaps (aided by a STOL kit) and started up a canyon. There we were, just creeping along.
Slowly, skillfully, the pilot analyzed the lowering cloud line ahead, and summarily made the call to turn around. He maneuvered that aircraft around a full 180 degrees with amazing expertise. We flew a few more miles ahead, and started up a second canyon in the same configuration.
Again the clouds had settled onto the mountaintops, so we tried a third canyon. And of course, third time’s the charm: we finally saw the runway at Circle City (PACR).
We taxied over to a small group of people, including the doctor, who were relieved that an airplane had been able to come to the rescue. The outside temperature was 57 degrees—below zero.
The remote reaches of Alaska just blend into other remote areas, sometimes in Russia, or more often, Yukon. Pilots regularly make informal border crossings back and forth between U.S. and Canadian soil.
While technically the Yukon is a foreign country, legend has it that things like airports of entry and formal customs routines sometimes fall by the wayside. Perhaps there can be no other practical way for pilots to operate in these remote locations.
Almost everyone and everything is moving back and forth between the two countries by airplane, often heading into remote Native villages or old gold rush destinations. One scenario for customs might go something like this:
A pilot was heading from Alaska into a wilderness strip in Canada, and he called the Canadian customs agent on the radio.
“Hey, is that you, Gary?” the customs officer radioed back.
“Yep, it’s me. Is that you, Jim?”
“You betcha, Gary. How’s your flight?”
“Real good; real good, Jim. Headed into Fergusson’s Landing.”
“Ah yeah, it’s nice there… gotta be careful, though. The bar puts Viagra in your drinks.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. That way they figure you can pour yourself a stiff one!”
Despite the notion that aviation in Alaska is ubiquitous, essential, and oh-so-alive and well, there is no arguing the fact that flying The Last Frontier is inherently dangerous.
Undoubtedly, Alaska grows some of the best pilots in the world. But operating in all those challenging environments is just plain risky business compared to the Sunday afternoon hundred-dollar hamburger flights that most of us log.
Alaskan pilots have three times the number of crashes as their kindred down here in the Lower 48. But don’t take my word for it. Check the aircraft insurance rates if you’re thinking of calling Alaska home. Those quotes are not for the financially faint of heart.
Still, there is nothing quite like aviation in Alaska. It’s something all of us pilots can be proud of: a place where the small airplane still rules.
Screenwriter, philanthropist and good guy Lyn Freeman has been writing aviation articles since before John Glenn joined the Marines. He is the former editor of Plane & Pilot magazine, founder and current chairperson of the Build-a-Plane organization, a master scuba diver, a championship table tennis player and an all-around Renaissance man. Send questions or comments to editor@piperflyer.org.
