On Thursday morning, Patrick Ford descended through clouds shrouding Juneau in a brand new Cessna 208 Caravan. The plane emerged from whiteout conditions at around 1600 feet above the Mendenhall Wetlands and glided gently onto the runway at Juneau International Airport.
Ford is a pilot and the director of operations at Alaska Seaplanes, the largest commuter airline in Southeast Alaska. For much of the test flight, he operated on autopilot using an approach that automatically followed fixed waypoints in the sky.
“Every one of these little star-looking guys is a different fix. It’s just a three-dimensional point in space that you have to hit at a specific spot at a specific altitude,” Ford said. “It’s basically just like driving down the highway, and you’re driving the highway in the sky, following the markers.”
The Federal Aviation Administration approved Alaska Seaplanes’ new departure and arrival paths in Juneau, Haines, Kake, Sitka, Hoonah, Klawock, Wrangell and Petersburg. Those paths are available to the company’s wheeled fleet, but not float planes. The goal of these new, proprietary approaches and departures is to improve flight safety and reliability for Southeast communities when pilots can’t see anything but clouds.
Andy Kline, marketing manager at Alaska Seaplanes, said the company spent millions to design and get authorization for the new paths. Since the expense was planned years in advance, he said passengers won’t see fare spikes from this.
The company’s new path in and out of Juneau International Airport goes through the south end of Gastineau Channel. Ford said it allows pilots to drop out of a cloud ceiling that’s as low as 580 feet above sea level, increasing a plane’s chances of landing in poor visibility instead of turning around.
“I’m sure you guys have been on a flight where you get halfway up to Haines and, you know, it’s shut down at Eldred Rock, and you have to turn around and come all the way back,” Ford said.
Those new flight paths are paired with advanced GPS technology called synthetic vision, made by Garmin. A screen in the cockpit displays a computer-generated 3-D view of the terrain, allowing pilots to ‘see’ their surroundings when there’s zero visibility.
Ford said that’s an advancement on what’s called instrument flight rules, or IFR, a set of FAA regulations that control the conditions for pilots relying on instruments to navigate rather than sight.
“It’s a huge, huge improvement in safety,” Ford said. “I sleep better at night knowing that that’s an option.”
Kline said it brings the commuter airline closer to the capabilities of Alaska Airlines, which has had the technology for decades.
That matters to residents of Southeast, a notoriously cloudy and mountainous region. Large jets don’t land in many small towns in the region, so residents rely on small, commuter flights for air travel.
Sean Kveum, co-owner and chief operating officer of Alaska Seaplanes, said that flights were frequently cancelled decades ago, before commuter aircraft could fly in low visibility
“We just had to stay low below the clouds and wait for good weather, and you could go when it was good enough,” Kveum said.
He said the new flight paths and synthetic vision will improve flights for outlying communities like Hoonah, where he grew up.
“It really allows us to be providing a more reliable service to the communities throughout Southeast,” he said.
Disclosure: Andy Kline is a former KTOO employee and an occasional fill-in host.
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that Alaska Seaplanes does not have the exact same capabilities as Alaska Airlines.