Alaska Airlines will use a larger aircraft on southbound Flight 64 for a couple of months this summer, adding about three dozen more seats to the capacity of the daily flight that goes from Anchorage to Juneau, Petersburg, Wrangell, Ketchikan and Seattle.
While the additional seat availability will help Wrangell travelers book a ticket on the day they want to fly, the need to bring in the larger aircraft was triggered by all the flyers from Prince of Wales Island communities who board in Ketchikan, said Scott Habberstad, the airline’s Anchorage-based sales and community marketing director.
“In the past few years, we’ve been having challenges with seats on Flight 64,” he said last week. “Last year, we saw a gigantic chokepoint in Ketchikan on Flight 64.”
The flight is the last nonstop of the evening from Ketchikan to Seattle, and is a preferred connection for people coming into Ketchikan on commuter and charter flights from Prince of Wales, Habberstad said.
Alaska will switch in mid-June from the 124-passenger Boeing 737-700 planes it has been running for years on the flight to the 159-passenger 737-800 series, he said. The change will run until mid-August.
Though the airline will continue to operate the 737-700 aircraft on the morning northbound jet through Wrangell, Flight 65, Habberstad said the company now has the option of switching that flight to the larger aircraft as needed.
The larger jet creates a stronger engine blast as it turns around in its parking spot in front of a terminal, and that was going to be a problem in Petersburg, with the Temsco hangar and its helicopter so close nearby. The airline solved the problem by bringing in a larger tug to move the 737-800 into position in Petersburg — without blasting the hangar with jet exhaust — Habberstad explained.
That opens up the option of putting a 737-800 on the northbound route as needed, such as during the heavy travel days of the Fourth of July, he said.
An additional advantage of putting the larger aircraft on the southbound run is more room to haul seafood. The belly of a 737-800 can accommodate more than twice the volume of a 737-700, according to the airline’s cargo services website.
In addition to moving cargo on its daily passenger flights into Wrangell and Petersburg, Alaska Airlines runs an all-freight aircraft on Thursdays from Seattle to Wrangell, then on to Juneau and Anchorage. Its weekly freighter to Petersburg runs on Wednesdays.
The company operates a fleet of three 737-700 freighters, and last week announced it will convert two of its 737-800 planes into all-cargo configurations. The converted aircraft are expected to join the fleet next year.
Reader Comments(0)