Alaska Airlines and the 2020 Great Land Investment Plan: $100 million infrastructure upgrade shows long-term commitment to state.

• Author: Friedman, Sam
• Position: AVIATION

Alaska Airlines operates a side business not common among big commercial carriers: the company owns eleven airport terminals.

In the rest of the United States, and in Alaska's bigger cities, airlines are tenants that lease gate space at airports. But like in so many other ways, rural Alaska is different. Airlines, including Alaska Airlines, needed to build their own facilities if they wanted to serve smaller communities.

"It's unheard of for a commercial carrier to own and maintain its own facilities," says Marilyn Romano, Alaska Airline's regional vice president for the state of Alaska.

But the arrangement works for the geography of the 49th State. In Alaska, 82 percent of communities aren't connected to the road system, so air service is much more important. Bush towns with populations of less than 5,000 people--like Kotzebue and Utqiagvik--are regional hubs that receive regular service from Boeing 737 jet airplanes.

It's a world away from Alaska Airlines' growing Lower 48 and international businesses, but the company plans to stay in the terminal business in Alaska. Over the next three years Alaska Airlines has committed $30 million in renovating and expanding its terminal buildings.

Product of Necessity

Alaska's eleven terminals were built at state-owned airports in Nome, Bethel, Kotzebue, Kodiak, Utqiagvik, Deadhorse, Cordova, Yakutat, Gustavus, Petersburg, and Wrangell. They're modest facilities compared to the shopping-mall type of amenities found in big city terminals. The Alaska Airlines rural terminals provide bathrooms and a warm place out of the weather to wait for flights. None of the terminals have jetways, and only Kodiak operates a conveyor belt system to deliver luggage.

But while they are simple, the Alaska Airlines remote terminals are much more comfortable than the minimal infrastructure at the smallest Alaska communities, where the airport often consists of a gravel runway and where the nearest warm building for passengers may be in town, a few miles from the airport.

Alaska Airlines entered the airport terminal business through necessity as it expanded to rural hub communities, Romano says.

"If we were going to provide jet service into these communities around the state, we needed facilities for our employees and our passengers," she says.

Among the current Alaska Airlines terminals, the oldest is Cordova, which opened in 1976, Romano says. The newest is Bethel, built in the early 2000s.

Nearly all Alaska airports lack...