Lori Townsend: Air travel came to a halt last year as the pandemic caused closures across the country.

In rural Alaska where planes are a lifeline for many communities, airlines had to pivot and adjust to the changes quickly.

Unknown: We prepared and planned for a sense that you have to fly in rural Alaska.

Lori Townsend: We'll discuss the current and future outlook of Alaska's small airlines right now on Alaska Insight.

Many of the pilots who fly for smaller commercial airlines in the state didn't grow up in the remote communities they serve.

Recruiting local Alaskans to become pilots for their home communities is at the heart of a training program housed at Alaska Pacific University.

Alaska Excel partners with more than a half dozen school districts across the state to offer technical training, including in aviation.

Emily Schwing has the story.

Unknown: This coming fall 20-year-old Ole Chief aims to get his commercial pilot's license.

To be honest, I really just wanted my driver's license.

And there's no DMVs in the village.

Chief hails from Mountain Village.

Fewer than 800 people live in the tiny Yukon River community in the Kusilvak census area.

Well, in the village, only like real things we look forward to like basketball, trapping, fishing, hunting.

If you're not good at any of those, then you're basically doing nothing out there.

Today Chief not only has his driver's license, he also has a private pilot's license and he recently returned from a six month stay in Minnesota, where he completed the work required to get his airplane instrument rating.

That rating allows pilots to fly airplanes in the clouds when visibility is low.

Yeah, it's just amazing up there.

Once you know how to fly and know where to go.

For the last year 19-year-old William Peterson has been alongside Chief, also working toward his commercial license.

I'm a person that was scared of heights.

Yeah.

And after I got into the airplane, it feels like you have stable ground in the airplane even though, even though you're up in the air.

But yeah, I was never thought I'd be able to fly an airplane.

Let's get underneath.

It's through Alaska EXCEL that both Chief and Peterson are able to pursue their careers in aviation, verifying its clean water, Alaska EXCEL offers students all kinds of different options for vocational and technical training, Heavy equipment, mechanics, did carpentry training.

I've done the whole nine yards of pretty much anything that that was interesting to me.

That kind of training Lee Ryan says is essential for businesses like his.

He's president of Ryan air, a small cargo and passenger service that serves 70 rural Alaska villages.

How are you man?

One of the strategies there is hire your people.

You know, how do we train students in rural Alaska to become pilots to become mechanics to become managers in aviation, cargo agents, customer service agents?

How do we grow our own?

And that's going to be a big strategy.

Ryan is a third-generation pilot from Unalakleet.

He says his Inupiaq values have kept his family-run company in the air nearly seven decades after his grandfather founded it.

We call it Fred Ryan.

Being able to in 2021 allow people in rural Alaska to live in the bush like you might live in Anchorage and have big screen TVs and a king size bed and four wheelers and snow machines, have all that aspect of being able to live there like you would here but be able to be home and go out.

Do the hunting and gathering and fishing and berry picking and stuff that that kind of puts your culture and who you are in your soul into your heart, you know, and we carry that as an organization.

Ryan is also the chairman of the state Aviation Advisory Board.

He says the coronavirus pandemic that played out over the last year laid bare exactly how essential air service is to rural Alaska.

Life literally came to a standstill.

Nobody knew what was coming next.

We didn't know how are we going to operate if we're going to be operating.

But we prepared and planned for a sense that you have to fly in rural Alaska and our frontline people matter so much, not only to the organization as a whole but to the people in rural Alaska.

That's not lost on William Peterson.

He grew up in Lower Kalskag where roughly 270 people live along the Kuskokwim River.

Right now, I have my first goal is to actually fly to Bethel and fly the YK Delta.

Because I think it would be pretty cool to go to the village and be like, Oh, I'm from Kalskag.

There's a lot of influence with alcohol and drugs and tobacco.

So I'm pretty sure if I was not out of the village, I would have been in those situations.

Peterson and Chief say flying in and out of their villages as kids, they remember only one Alaska Native pilot.

And that's one of the things I want to do is help it grow, you know?

Have more Alaska Native pilots, have more Alaska Natives do more Alaskan things.

For Alaska Public Media, I'm Emily Schwing in Anchorage.

Lori Townsend: To better understand the importance of rural air travel and how small carriers in Alaska are doing today.

I'm joined by Colleen Mondor, an investigative journalist and author who specializes in Alaska aviation, and Jamie Klaes, director of aviation for Alaska, EXCEL, and a commercial pilot.

Thanks for being here both of you.

I want to start Jamie with you.

Give us kind of the general picture of the status of rural air service currently, after more than a year of very deep disruptions to travel and revenue loss, where are the areas of most concern for rural Alaska that you're seeing that don't currently have enough service?

Unknown: Well, that I know of, you know, Alaska is a big state, but I'm fairly connected to Interior where I grew up.

And Interior has lost multiple air taxis.

So there's kind of a monopoly operating in that area, and there's reduced service because of it.

And of course, in western after the collapse of Ravn, that's really increased the ticket amounts and the students that you just saw, they had a hard time not only going home because of COVID to visit, but because ticket prices were so inflated after not having that competition.

Lori Townsend: Well, thank you for getting us started there.

Colleen, follow up there with your observations about where the big pinch points are in the state.

Unknown: Well, Jamie's right, as far as Ravn's collapse was catastrophic, even though for aviation and for everybody who lived in rural Alaska.

But it was not a surprising collapse.

That company was in trouble and had been in trouble for a long time.

The bigger issue was COVID pinpointed how when you have one company that has gotten so big, and we have such reduced competition already, that when it left, then the competition became absolutely miniscule.

I think Jamie is correct when she highlights Interior Alaska, you could say Northwest and North Slope, Ravn dominated the North Slope and then was gone.

So you actually had to pull in carriers from different areas to try and cover for there.

Obviously, when Alaska was devastated after the crash of Penair 3296.

And they kind of predated the COVID situation, where they lost all service down there.

So probably the only area that's been impacted the least, I would say is likely Southeast because they had ferries.

But of course, that's a whole other situation.

But it's been statewide.

I can't say that one part of Alaska has suffered more than any other.

I think they have all suffered to varying degrees.

It's been pretty intense.

Lori Townsend: Well, following up there, how do you see that affecting the viability of people being able to to afford to live in these offroad communities.

It's expensive to live in rural Alaska anyway, and the loss of regular or any air service to some communities.

It just seems like it it must be sort of a tipping point for rural residents Unknown: We need a healthy aviation environment, commercial aviation environment in Alaska.

And in a healthy environment means a diverse environment.

And when I say diversity in that context, I mean a lot of different companies flying both cargo passengers, passenger and cargo combinations.

We need companies of a lot of different size, from single pilot owner operators who are just air taxis operating with one aircraft on demand charters, all the way up to companies like Ryan, like Grant, like Warbelow's, like Ace, that fly scheduled commuter flights.

But we also need very much what Jamie's work is highlighting.

You can't keep importing pilots.

And that's been an old problem that Alaska has had.

Now that the terrain has changed a little bit now because you had a lot of pilots who became unemployed with the demise of Ravn.

So we actually had quite a few pilots who were desperately looking for jobs in the middle of all this as well and we shouldn't underscore the impact on their careers.

But it hasn't been a healthy environment.

For a long time, just because Ravn was big doesn't mean that it was a healthy aviation environment in Alaska and COVID.

The demise of Raven and COVID have exposed that and there's work to be done.

Lori Townsend: Jamie follow up there about the importance of of having Alaskans trained as pilots, you taught the students in the story that we just saw.

Why, why is it important to have those rural residents become pilots for those areas?

Unknown: I believe it's important because the pilots, as you saw Ole, and William, they're very connected to the people and the land.

Not only are they incredibly knowledgeable about the weather patterns and the area, but they're actually invested in those communities, whereas when you bring people from Outside in the aviation industry, people want to build time, and especially the mentality of they're just putting their time in until they can go to another place to where they want to go.

So it's a short term thing for a lot of pilots.

Whereas someone from the area born and raised wants to continue serving their community, the best way possible that they can.

Lori Townsend: I have a friend in Talkeetna, Katie Ryder, who is a pilot, and now I know you, Jamie.

So two women pilots that I know in Alaska, I'm sure there's more.

But how does that?

How does that kind of shake out for the number of women pilots in Alaska compared to men who are flying here?

Unknown: Oh, well, there's a lot less woman I think, I can't remember -- Colleen might know better than I do, but I thought it was 4% overall, in the total world population, it might, or maybe it was eight, but it's really small.

So being in Alaska, there's, there's a lot of, there are a lot of female pilots more than there used to be.

And we all know each other.

Because it's kind of like being in a club.

Once you get your your license, you start to meet all the other women that have it.

But it is challenging for not only you know, women but Alaskan Native students, as you saw, to be able to believe in themselves and have that confidence if they haven't had it modeled to them and seen it in someone else that is of the same gender or race.

So I think it's important for, for women to continue doing that work and being mentors, as well as Ole and William, you know, I hope that they and other students that I have will grow into an instructor role and be able to be mentors as well.

Lori Townsend: How expensive is flight school and what's available for especially younger students, like the the two that we saw in the story previously, what's available to help them with that expense?

Unknown: Well, since, so Alaska EXCEL takes them through their senior year and their private pilot's license.

And then I actually take them on as a mentor, and help them with scholarship funding.

So they've each applied for every scholarship available, and some of those scholarships come from their Native Corps or their village tribal corporations.

Some come from large organizations like AOPA, Alaska Airmen's Association has granted them two scholarships, they go to another one this year.

And so they just keep applying for those scholarships, and it's been able to fund their training.

And flight training all is very dependent on how long it takes you to finish.

It could be anywhere from you know, $50,000 to $100,000, depending on how many hours and training you need to get your licenses done.

Lori Townsend: Are there scholarships available for, again back to women, if women more women wanted to get into aviation?

Are there also some scholarships available that they could access?

Unknown: Yes, there's a lot of women-specific scholarships, through the 99s and through Women in Aviation.

And I just keep a running list of all of those for my students, because each one, each student falls into a different demographic of what they're able to apply for.

But there are a lot of great scholarships out there for women.

Lori Townsend: You've been running the program for two years now before the COVID problems, how many people that start in aviation training end up staying on that track to actually become pilots?

And what are the other options that they may go into?

Unknown: So we start with a pretty full class and it's an introductory class.

So that can be anywhere from 30 to 40 students, and I try to introduce all the aviation careers available to them.

But I'm a pilot and that's what I do and that's what I teach.

So our program is centered around pilot training.

Probably half of those students will end up in my ground school, which is a month long.

They get about six hours of flight time.

And then after that the students, they kind of dwindle, any teenager has got to be really motivated to continue on to their private pilot's license and get through it.

So typically, we only have funding for a few students to go through the entire program in the summer.

So the rest of them go into our other strands, which everything from culinary to construction, business, tech We have a lot of different training programs, some of them go into the military or apply for jobs or university.

So really, Alaska EXCEL provides that pathway for them when they graduate high school as to what the next step is going to be for them.

And it's all very individualized.

Lori Townsend: What's fantastic.

Thank you.

Colleen, you've written extensively about Alaska's small airlines.

Give us a bit of the history that clarifies why they're so vital in the state.

Unknown: Well, Alaska aviation goes back to the 1920s.

And that's the names that are familiar to a lot of people: Eielson, Krause and Merrill, Mead, Ellis, statewide.

And it grew the same way that it grew in the Lower 48.

Aviation just became critical for flying passengers freight and mail.

The first mail contracts in the state were in the mid 1920s.

Fairbanks-McGrath was the first one.

So aviation early on, as soon as it became viable in Alaska, and they were doing things in the 20s and 30s, which you know, I'm sure Jamie would tell you are pretty amazing.

But it transformed the state it brought you know, it saved a lot of lives.

That's the obvious one, but also just the ability logistically to move passengers freight and mail over distances that prior to that you were depending on, on barge or dog sled.

So it it transformed again, during World War II, that's when we got a lot of these super big runways.

That's why you have a 10,000 foot runway at Cold Bay, the runway in Galena, things like that.

That's all World War II-related so there was like a big jump in infrastructure in Alaska because of the war.

And then it just continued to grow.

So the state has gone as well as far as it can go with roads to a certain extent.

So aviation picked up this flag in the Lower 48.

It didn't have to so much in Alaska it did.

So we developed kind of in fits and starts, this industry of small companies, which are air taxis and commuters, and who operate under one section of the federal regulations.

And then a few bigger ones that fly the bigger aircraft like NAC and Linden, Alaska Airlines, comes in and out.

A portion of Ravn was that way.

They flew the bigger planes under a different section of the regulations and people became dependent.

Our lives were transformed, Alaskan lives were transformed because of it.

And here we are today.

Lori Townsend: huh?

Colleen Raven Airlines was the first to declare bankruptcy during the pandemic.

Give us kind of the snapshot of that they were in financial trouble before the pandemic, and comprised of several consolidated air carriers.

So this is a big issue.

Unknown: Ravn was an air group, which is an easier way to look at it.

It was not one company, it was four separate operating certificates.

So four separate companies each operating on their own FAA certificates, an easy way to break it down.

So Ravn was formed initially by Frontier Flying Service and Hageland Aviation, who merged in 2008.

And then the next year, they bought Era Aviation, which eventually changed its name to Corvus.

And that's a company that flew flew the Dash 8s that a lot of Alaskans in South Central are familiar with.

So then as a few years went by, they purchased a few other companies, Arctic Circle, Yute, and then in 2018, they purchased PenAir.

So Ravn Air Group was four separate companies, three of which were of pretty big size, Corvus, PenAir and Hageland.

And by the time that the code the pandemic started, they were $90 million in debt.

And a lot of those debts certainly proceeded the pandemic.

They were for aircraft lease, hangar lease, fuel purchases, you know, leases across the state, when engines you know, all pretty fundamental basic things.

Ravn said at the time of its bankruptcy, which was filed in April of last year, that they were suffering in 90% drop off in passenger revenue and and that is why they had to file for bankruptcy.

But their passenger statistics, air carrier passenger statistics are all reportable to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and the numbers don't actually support that.

Corvus was actually struggling, PenAir was struggling in the wake of the crash in Dutch Harbor, but Hageland was actually doing well.

So if you do a quarter to quarter comparison between In the first quarter of 2019, in the first quarter of 2020, they were only down about 13%.

In passenger traffic, their freight was down.

But their mail was actually doing quite well.

Hageland flew a crazy amount of mail.

In 2019, they flew over like 27 million pounds of mail.

I mean, Hageland was just a huge engine in the aviation industry in Alaska, and it was a critical part of Ravn.

So the company had multiple problems, they had a lot of accidents.

panneirs was only the most recent fatality accident.

But there was another accident, actually, in January and Fairbanks where there were no injuries.

But all of that increases your insurance payments and increases your maintenance costs.

They have a lot of flight training, you know, costs, all those sorts of things.

So it was an ailing company, before COVID occurred.

And I think also the proof of Ravn's susceptibility to something like COVID is when you look at all the companies that have weathered it.

When you look at Ace, when you look at Ryan, when you look at Warbelow's and Bering and Alaska Seaplanes, they all have managed to hang in there.

So I think that's proof that the Ravn was under separate stressors from from them.

Lori Townsend: All right, thank you for that breakdown of that.

Jamie, you mentioned in an earlier interview that in Bettles in Interior used to have four flights a day, I was so surprised to hear that.

And now it's down to one.

Is this sort of representative of what you're seeing in rural Alaska, big reductions in the amount and the frequency of air service?

And is it the expense that's driving the reductions or reduced demand from the communities?

Unknown: Well, I believe it's just the fact that these air taxis have been bought up.

And so they don't want to compete with themselves.

And so they can maximize their profit, which any business would do by offering less flights.

There's also the pilot shortage that was a problem before COVID.

It's not a problem now, but it will be back, which is going to really impact rural, you know, in the next one to two years, or the aviation industry as a whole, of course.

But the rural aspect, they're going to be more desperate for pilots.

So I don't know how they'll expand service at that time.

I don't believe it's because of reduced demand.

The same amount of people are living in rural now, as were the last couple of years.

But there is just that one air taxi has bought up most of the other ones in Fairbanks, which services the whole Interior.

So that's why there's only one flight a day versus four.

So people are, you know, waiting on freight and mail and, and having to go on a four hour tour before you get to your village because it stops in so many places and really booked out far in advance.

Lori Townsend: Do you have an idea of the expense running a flying service here as compared to other states that have a lot of rural territory like Montana or other western states?

Is it just more expensive here, like so many other things are?

Unknown: Well, the the biggest cost here compared to another state is insurance.

Because the insurance companies base it off of how many wrecks are being had in Alaska.

And you compare it to another state, I don't I don't know what the percentage is.

But it's definitely you know, a third of the cost or something to operate somewhere else than it is in Alaska.

So commercial insurance here is dictated by how many wrecks are happening, and lately it's increased a lot.

And of course, the price of fuel here peices debt is higher, but those are going to be the two main reasons it's more expensive to operate.

You know, we've got inclement weather conditions, so heating buildings and hangars, it's gonna burn more diesel.

So there are some very real factors as to why it's more expensive to operate here than other locations.

Lori Townsend: Colleen follow up there.

There's a lot of air travel in Alaska, as we know, but how does the accident rate compare with other states?

You've written a lot about flight accidents here.

You're the author of a book called 'The Map of My Dead Pilots: the dangerous game of flying in Alaska.'

How do we compare for accident rates?

Unknown: What's tricky about that is you will see statistics or studies that are conducted to say Alaska disproportionately makes up most of the commercial air carrier accidents in the in the U.S.

The problem is we fly a lot more commercially then than they do in the Lower 48.

But even more significantly, we don't have the navigational infrastructure that the Lower 48 has.

The money has not been put in to a lot of Alaska by the federal government that was put into the Lower 48.

Lori Townsend: Um, so I have to leave it there.

I didn't realize that we were so close to being out of time.

So I'm so sorry.

We'll have to pick that up again in another conversation.

Thank you so much, Colleen and Jamie for being with us this evening.

That is it for this episode of Alaska Insight.

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Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.