Air cargo ranks high: busy state-owned international airports in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Transportation

Many people across the nation and throughout the world visit Alaska for its majestic beauty and natural wonder. They come to see the vibrant Aurora Borealis, catch a glimpse of the state's wild animals, or see what really makes up the Last Frontier. One thing many travelers don't consider is the vast amounts of goods that travel to--and especially through--Alaska.

Passenger flights accounted for a little over 60 percent of flights in 2012--that's a total of 6 million passengers--to Alaska's International Airports. The nearly 40 percent of cargo flights, however, weighed in at 5.5 billion pounds of goods, nearly two-thirds of which was in-transit, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities 2013 Annual Activity Summary Report for the Alaska International Airport System (AIAS).

AIAS is comprised of Ted Stevens Anchorage and Fairbanks international airports. Operations began in 1951, and the state was granted both airports in 1959 and assumed management a year later. Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is the fifth largest airport in the world for cargo throughput and the second in the United States for landed weight, according to the AIAS website.

Location

John Parrott, airport manager for the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, says Anchorage's geographic location gives the airport a distinct advantage over other airports across the nation.

"The most important advantage we have is location, location, location. We are within nine and a half hours of 90 percent of the industrialized world," Parrott says. "We are the biggest airport closest to the midpoint between the manufacturing centers of Asia and the consumption centers of North America, and were not off the beaten path to connecting one of those two to Europe."

Parrott says that airplanes like the Boeing 747 can overfly Anchorage and go to the West Coast but must refuel and take off cargo.

"Nobody is paying them to carry fuel; they're being paid to carry cargo, so this location is very important in allowing them to maximize their cargo revenue," Parrott says.

FedEx, among other carriers, tends to agree on Anchorage's advantageous position in the global cargo network. FedEx has a five hundred thousand-square foot sorting facility, with the capacity to process fifteen thousand pieces per hour.

"FedEx continues to move a significant amount of our international volume--especially deferred volume between the US and Asia--through Anchorage," says...