Commercial Airline Flights Resume Between Anchorage and Unalaska After Fatal Crash
Commercial airline service is back between Anchorage and Unalaska after a fatal crash nearly a month ago shut down scheduled flights at the city’s notoriously challenging airport.
But Alaska Airlines, which serviced that route for years, has no immediate plans to sell tickets again.
Ravn started commercial service Thursday with the de Havilland Dash 8, a different type of aircraft from the one involved in the fatal flight last month.
That flight, operated by a Ravn Air Group subsidiary, crashed Oct. 17 with 29 passengers and three crew, killing one passenger and injuring four others. The pilot overran the runway on his second landing attempt.
People in the plane described shrapnel and parts of a propeller slicing through the cabin.
The Saab 2000 twin-engine turboprop crashed through the airport’s perimeter fence, crossed a road and came to rest on rocks at the Bering Sea shore, according to a preliminary report released Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The agency sent a major investigations team from Washington, D.C., to look into the incident, which marked the first commercial airline fatality in the United States in the last decade.
The last fatal crash in the U.S. involving a commercial airline was in February 2009, when a Continental Connection flight from Newark crashed into a home on approach to the airport in Buffalo, New York. Two pilots, two flight attendants and all 45 passengers died, as did one person on the ground.
It could be more than a year before federal investigators determine a probable cause for the Unalaska event.
Killed in the crash was 38-year-old David Allan Oltman, a Washington state resident who residents said came to Unalaska for his work as co-owner of a construction company. Oltman is survived by his parents, wife and two young children, according to an obituary the family provided to KUCB. They described him as the kind of person who connected easily with others and worked various jobs from ski patrol and commercial fishing to technology plant manager and orthopedic implant representative.
Ten people were originally checked for injuries described as ranging from minor to critical. Members of the Cordova High School swim team were on the flight; one swimmer needed metal removed from his leg.
The crash halted all commercial airline service for the Unalaska airport that serves an average of 58,000 ticketed passengers.
Until Thursday, the absence of regular, scheduled service between Anchorage and Unalaska led to stranded travelers and a rush for crowded, pricey charter flights that can be difficult to book. The shutdown came as Bering Sea crab and pollock seasons wound down in Unalaska’s Dutch Harbor, the nation’s largest seafood port by volume.
Alaska Airlines has been flying into Unalaska for decades, a spokesman said.
Before the crash, the Seattle-based airline marketed up to three flights a day between Anchorage and Unalaska, where temperamental Aleutian weather batters a relatively short runway tucked against a mountain.
The crash flight was marketed under the name PenAir, short for longtime Alaska carrier Peninsula Airways. But the flight was operated by Ravn Air Group subsidiary Peninsula Aviation Services Inc., which bought PenAir’s name and assets in a bankruptcy proceeding last year.
Alaska Airlines can’t market the flights because the capacity agreement with Ravn/PenAir was for the Saab 2000, Alaska spokesman Tim Thompson said this week.
“You can’t substitute planes as the agreement was with PenAir, and not Ravn. We do not have an agreement in this market with Ravn,” Thompson said in an email. “Additionally, our current fleet of jets cannot land at this airport.”
Alaska Airlines told the Unalaska city manager Thursday that the carrier is working with Ravn on “a potential solution” for travelers with Alaska Airlines tickets on the route, according to a city update Friday. An update was expected in coming days.
Representatives of both airlines told the city they plan to hold a community meeting in Unalaska next month.
The city got emergency permission to run short-term public charters to get residents on and off the island.
Ravn executives said at a meeting in Unalaska last month that they planned to resume Saab 2000 flights at a future date after implementing any necessary safety measures. A Ravn spokeswoman did not respond to questions asking for more details.
“At this time we don’t know if the two airlines will enter into a capacity agreement for the Dash 8 allowing for tickets to be purchased through Alaska Airlines,” the Unalaska update states. “The City acknowledges there are many remaining questions and concerns.”
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