Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 9

165 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 9 KETCHI KAN INTERNAT IONAL A I RPORT after year,” explains Alex Peura, Airport Manager, “and this summer has seen a return to almost pre-COVID numbers, so it is the main industry here, along with commercial fishing. This is an incredible place with snow-capped mountains, mist-shrouded forests, and beautiful open coastal ocean scenes. The airport itself is located on a different island, Gravina Island and is separated from Ketchikan by a thousand-foot channel of water. We operate a passenger and vehicle ferry service that runs every 15 minutes to take you over to experience the scenic frontier lifestyle.” The airport has a single 7500-foot runway, designated as two runways, north and south, as well as taxiways on either end, making Ketchikan quite a safe place to land – always into the headwind with no sidewind effect. Alaskan Airlines flies from Ketchikan south to Seattle year-round and Delta makes the loop during the summer months. Because of its location and north/south direction, the airport is a desirable alternative landing site for other planes when the weather gets rough. “We also have a floatplane facility,” Peura points out. “Floatplanes are a heavy presence in this area, as they are all through southern Alaska. A lot of our traffic in the summer is people going to various fishing lodges or other outlying places. They will land commercially at Ketchikan and then transfer to our local air taxis.” Private Charter and Air Taxi services make up a large portion of the traffic. Island Air Express runs commercial charters to Klawock Alaska on the Prince William Islands, all of their wheeled plane transport goes through the airport, as do many of their amphibious charters. Then there is Misty Fjords Aviation that offers sightseeing and charter flights. Those and many of the other charter companies that use the airport actually fly the De Havilland Beaver or the Otter,