Residents of St. Paul haven’t had commercial air service since mid summer. The main airline that served the island in the middle of the Bering Sea, Ravn Alaska, stopped operations statewide in August. And now – as of Oct. 1 – a change in the Essential Air Service program means the city of over 400 people have no regularly scheduled commercial flights.
Alaska Public Media’s Ava White spoke with the Alaska Desk’s Theo Greenly, who reports in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Ava White: Where do things stand now?
Theo Greenly: Ravn Alaska had announced earlier in the year that they were going to stop flying to St. Paul on October 1, but they ended up pulling out sooner, and then the company folded. Ravn was the only airline that was flying commercial scheduled flights between Anchorage and St. Paul. Since then, there have been no scheduled passenger flights, just charter operations organized by the tribal government, The Aleut Community of Saint Paul Island.
The Department of Transportation has not yet selected a new carrier under the Essential Air Service program. So right now, the community is essentially still in limbo. They are completely dependent on charters while they wait for federal action.
AW: And then in some of your previous reporting, you've mentioned that the tribe is essentially operating a DIY airline that facilitates charters for the community, which right now is the only option for folks trying to reach Anchorage. So what has that meant for the community and their pocketbooks?
TG: The tribal government has stepped up and is, like you said, basically running an ad hoc airline. What they do is they charter planes from Security Aviation, which flies a Learjet. It's an eight seater.
Then the tribe resells individual seats to residents. Those tickets cost $1,300 one way from Anchorage to St. Paul, and that's roughly $500 more than when Raven was operating. The tribe has to pay for the full flight, even if it doesn't sell out. And so that's a big financial risk. Every single person I spoke with for the story said that they don't fly anymore, except for medical. And that has ripple effects throughout the entire community.
I spoke with the Tribal Council president, John Wayne Melovidov, and he said that it's really affecting the community. He said that every year, there are many people in the community who have a tradition, and this is true across the state, that people will fly to Anchorage for the Alaska State Fair. Here he is talking about that and what it means for him and his family.
John Wayne Melovidov: It's very tough. I mean, you don't see people, you don't see families, especially leaving for vacations. I'd be curious to see how many people went to the fair this year, and I don't think anybody did. It's been a very popular thing, everybody, all the kids, want to leave for the State Fair. But it's just, it's not reasonable right now. We just can't, it's out of our reach.
Going to the Alaska State Fair is out of our reach. That's crazy, right?
AW: You fly to and from the region fairly often. What’s it like getting in and out of there?
TG: It's always a challenge. I mean, even before this current crisis, the Bering Sea, you know, the weather is notoriously unpredictable. There's thick fog, cross winds, icing conditions, and on top of that, the airport's navigational aids, the glide slope, weather observing system and cameras. They've been unreliable or completely down for long stretches. That means flights get canceled or delayed all the time. I was trying to fly out there in June from Anchorage, and I spent nine days trying to get out there. Every day the flight was canceled. And what you end up doing is trying to get on the next flight. You go to the airport, you get on standby, maybe you get a seat, maybe you don't. Regardless, the flights just kept on canceling because of thick fog or some other weather condition. I ended up doing that like I said, for nine days before I threw in the towel and flew back to Sand Point, which is also a difficult place to get to. So that just shows how bad St. Paul has it. There was one day when I boarded the plane, we took off. We flew to Bethel for a fuel stop, then we sat on the runway waiting for weather in St. Paul to clear up. The pilot decided that it was too rough to fly, and we turned around and flew back to Anchorage, and I had to play the standby game again the next day.
AW: The Essential Air Service is supposed to prevent exactly this, isolation in rural areas. Help us close the gap- what’s happening with the city’s bid for a new carrier, and what does that reveal about overall cracks in the system?
TG: The first bid was from Kenai Aviation to fly King Air aircraft. They're smaller planes than what Ravn was flying – and that means fewer passengers, less cargo baggage. But they were going to make up for it by flying more often than Ravn was.
But the community said no, it would not serve their purposes. They revoked their support. Under the Essential Air Service Program, the community support is a really, really key factor.
So the Department of Transportation asked for replacement bids. This time, Aleutian Airways bid with what the community considers to be a much stronger proposal. It's a larger plane, it's a Saab 2000.
The fares would be a lot cheaper – $399, and that is far and away the most affordable ticket that not only has St. Paul seen in a long time, but the entire Aleutian and Pribilof Island region. For context, a one way ticket from Unalaska (Dutch Harbor) to Anchorage is roughly $800.
As it stands today, the Department of Transportation has not announced a final decision, but the community strongly supports Aleutian airways, and the city just put out a statement that says they expect the Department of Transportation to accept the Aleutian airways bid.
AW: What does that tell us about the challenges of keeping rural Alaskans connected in the long run?
TG: Well, I'll say this – we've seen similar gaps in Unalakleet and St Mary's, they've been experiencing a very similar situation. And you get into the scenario that when one airline folds, there's no quick replacement, and it just kind of shows how fragile Alaska's air network really is.
Air Service here is not a luxury. It's how people not only get in and out, but it's how they get food and medicine and go out to receive medical care. These state and federal systems rely on very small, often independently run airlines operating on thin margins.
When a plane takes off full of passengers on its way to St. Paul flies to Bethel and then flies back to Anchorage. The airline, they're paying for fuel. They are paying staff passengers who didn't get to their destination. They have to put them onto the next plane. You don't have to be a math whiz to see how quickly those costs add up, and all of that just makes it tremendously difficult for an airline to operate. Those are exactly the kinds of things that the Essential Air Service system is meant to address. But in this case, at least so far, it has been unable to do so.
