For this week’s blog assignment, you may write on any aspect of Arctic transportation you would like to comment on. I have been looking at some of the luxury cruises available and it is eye-opening!
Air travel in the Arctic can be quite the experience. In many cases, villages are located off the road system, so air travel is necessary (even if its a coastal village, most of the year the waters are frozen). In Alaska, for instance, Alaska Air provides services to the hub villages, such as Kotzebue, Nome, and Bethel. However, from there, you need to take a regional airline to get to the smaller villages of the region. In my region, the Northwest Arctic Borough, the only air carrier to the villages outside of Kotzebue is Bering Air. Being the only option, they can charge however much they please to their customers who are completely dependent upon their services. These costs can be highly prohibitive, and many people can’t afford to leave their village. It may sound dishonest, but often times people will develop “health issues,” which need to be treated in Kotzebue, so medicaid will pay for the trip, rather than out of their own pocket.
Alaska Air also has a monopoly on these regions. They charge exorbitant fares to simply get to Anchorage. Oftentimes, it is cheaper to fly Anchorage to Boston, than it is to fly Kotzebue to Anchorage. Those awesome emails we get about deals on Alaska? Never do they include fares from the bush. It is ALASKA air. They have seemed to forget that their backbone is the residents of Alaska, and seem to concentrate most of their resources on Seattle and Portland.
Air travel is required for freight as well. Without air cargo, all of us in the bush would be in deep trouble. This occurs on a semi-regular basis in the winter, when storms hit and planes cannot get in for days at a time. The store will run out of staple items, and you will see Facebook posts asking if anyone has two eggs to spare or a stick of butter. Air freight is the most important transportation issue to face in the Alaskan Arctic. Without it, we would be relegated to living off the land, which most people are ill-equipped to do. We would not receive any mail, groceries, or other things we take advantage of from Amazon, etc. Air freight is the king in the game of transportation.
Roads are the default method of transport for most of us, so hearing about a new road being built seems like no big deal at first glance. The first time I ever heard about a protest in Alaska over a road being constructed I thought “why are people so angry about something so seemingly mundane?” But that’s because at the time I didn’t fully comprehend how roads can negatively impact wildlife, and how people who depend on deer, moose, etc. have their livelihoods directly threatened when a road is put in the wrong place. I also didn’t make the connection to colonization, and how business interests tend to play a direct role in further destroying the way of life of Indigenous peoples. Transportation in the Arctic is a tricky thing, because trying to connect villages to one another or to larger population hubs really isn’t as simple as ‘just build a road’ because of all the complications that come with it.
Right now bush planes are the go-to for a reason, and while you won’t ever see me flying in one, I understand now why they’re used instead of roads in rural Alaska.
Air travel in the Arctic can be quite the experience. In many cases, villages are located off the road system, so air travel is necessary (even if its a coastal village, most of the year the waters are frozen). In Alaska, for instance, Alaska Air provides services to the hub villages, such as Kotzebue, Nome, and Bethel. However, from there, you need to take a regional airline to get to the smaller villages of the region. In my region, the Northwest Arctic Borough, the only air carrier to the villages outside of Kotzebue is Bering Air. Being the only option, they can charge however much they please to their customers who are completely dependent upon their services. These costs can be highly prohibitive, and many people can’t afford to leave their village. It may sound dishonest, but often times people will develop “health issues,” which need to be treated in Kotzebue, so medicaid will pay for the trip, rather than out of their own pocket.
Alaska Air also has a monopoly on these regions. They charge exorbitant fares to simply get to Anchorage. Oftentimes, it is cheaper to fly Anchorage to Boston, than it is to fly Kotzebue to Anchorage. Those awesome emails we get about deals on Alaska? Never do they include fares from the bush. It is ALASKA air. They have seemed to forget that their backbone is the residents of Alaska, and seem to concentrate most of their resources on Seattle and Portland.
Air travel is required for freight as well. Without air cargo, all of us in the bush would be in deep trouble. This occurs on a semi-regular basis in the winter, when storms hit and planes cannot get in for days at a time. The store will run out of staple items, and you will see Facebook posts asking if anyone has two eggs to spare or a stick of butter. Air freight is the most important transportation issue to face in the Alaskan Arctic. Without it, we would be relegated to living off the land, which most people are ill-equipped to do. We would not receive any mail, groceries, or other things we take advantage of from Amazon, etc. Air freight is the king in the game of transportation.
I had no idea about Alaska Air– add that to the list of exorbitantly expensive services for rural folks!
Roads are the default method of transport for most of us, so hearing about a new road being built seems like no big deal at first glance. The first time I ever heard about a protest in Alaska over a road being constructed I thought “why are people so angry about something so seemingly mundane?” But that’s because at the time I didn’t fully comprehend how roads can negatively impact wildlife, and how people who depend on deer, moose, etc. have their livelihoods directly threatened when a road is put in the wrong place. I also didn’t make the connection to colonization, and how business interests tend to play a direct role in further destroying the way of life of Indigenous peoples. Transportation in the Arctic is a tricky thing, because trying to connect villages to one another or to larger population hubs really isn’t as simple as ‘just build a road’ because of all the complications that come with it.
Right now bush planes are the go-to for a reason, and while you won’t ever see me flying in one, I understand now why they’re used instead of roads in rural Alaska.
caribou* not deer