Air cargo mission: making life better in rural Alaska.

AuthorStricker, Julie
PositionTRANSPORTATION

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Here is a story that may sound familiar: An epidemic threatens a remote Alaska village and vaccines are desperately needed. The village is hundreds of miles off the road system, so alternate transportation must be arranged. Many people work together to come up with a solution and by their efforts, the vaccines reach the village and potential illnesses are averted.

While it is a familiar scenario--think of the deadly 1925 diphtheria outbreak in Nome in which heroic mushers and sled dog teams famously battled blizzards to deliver the serum--few realize a similar vaccine delivery happened with little fuss or fanfare just last year.

The vaccine was needed to stave off a feared pandemic of H1N1 flu. It was part of an Alaska Air Cargo shipment, one of the more notable deliveries out of thousands. The need was the same as in 1925, says Joe Samudovsky, director of cargo sales for Alaska Air Cargo, "only instead of sled dogs, we used our fleet of planes."

It's an illustration of how much has changed, and how much hasn't, in rural Alaska in the past century.

AIR CARGO MISSION

Airplanes long ago displaced dog teams as the main mode of transportation, and air cargo carriers are a lifeline for people in rural Alaska. But Alaska is still huge, with extreme terrain and unpredictable weather. Airplanes and fuel are expensive, business is unpredictable and the rules governing air cargo carriers are often in flux. For the carriers, however, serving rural Alaska is more than business, it's a mission to raise the quality of life for people living in remote areas.

"We realize air service and cargo service in Alaska is not a luxury, it's a necessity," says Torque Zubeck, managing director for Alaska Air Cargo. "Our workers feel a real sense of mission. They'd rather fly cargo; they know how people rely on it."

No other place in the US is so dependent on air cargo. Some statistics from the Alaska Air Carriers Association:

* Alaska is one-fifth the size of the Lower 48, but only 18 percent of the state is accessible by road.

* Almost 1 ton of freight per Alaskan is shipped each year, 39 times higher than the rest of the country.

* Alaska has six times as many pilots and 16 times as many aircraft per person in comparison with the United States in general.

* Aviation employs 10 percent of Alaska's total work force and contributes $3.5 billion to the state economy.

* The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities owns 253 rural...

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