“People are having to make really hard decisions about whether they want to stay or go,” said high-school principal Jim Wilson in Unalaska, where high airfares are affecting concerns ranging from school sports travel to medical care.
Unalaska Fire Captain Ben Knowles was elated when he heard the news: after roughly two years of waiting, he could use his Alaska Airlines miles to purchase flights to Unalaska. Like most locals, the firefighter relies on using the mileage sharing program to afford steep airline tickets on and off the remote Aleutian island.
If you want to fly from Anchorage to the Aleutian Islands community using the Alaska Airlines mileage program, it’ll cost you around 40,000 miles. It’s only around 2,500 more to fly to Dubai instead. But Dubai is on the other side of the world — about eight times the distance from Anchorage. It costs more miles to fly from Anchorage to Unalaska than it costs to fly to Paris.
It’s pretty much always been expensive to fly to and from Unalaska. It’s a doozy of a trip, involving inclement Aleutian weather and a very small runway surrounded by water and mountains.“It makes everybody rethink their life moving forward,” said Unalaska City School District Superintendent Dr. Robbie Swint Jr. “And I will say, I am rethinking mine too.
“I mean just to travel back and forth to Anchorage, just to Anchorage, you’re not doing anything else, no hotel, no car rental, no food, no travel — if you want to go somewhere else — it’s astronomical right now,” Swint said.A June report by Adobe Analytics found that prices for domestic airlines had risen about 47% around the nation since the start of the year.Ravn is the only airline currently providing the island with regular commercial air service to Anchorage.
Still, Unalaska Mayor Vince Tutiakoff Sr. said he’s disappointed that Ravn removed the Aleutian resident pricing, and voiced concern that community members will be forced to leave the island in light of these increasing expenses. She says that can be dangerous, leaving her and her staff facing scary questions like, “are we sitting on a cancer because this person can’t afford to fly in?”
“If you’re a young teacher making $55,000 a year, and you need to spend $5,000 to $10,000 of that on airfare, it’s difficult to make it,” Wilson said. “And so I think it’s going to impact, not only teacher retention, but I also think we’re going to see it ultimately impact — I really, truly believe — the size of the community as well. People are having to make really hard decisions about whether they want to stay or go.
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