One reason Bethel is an important hub is because it has the only airport in the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta that services large passenger flights to destinations on the roads system.
Now, Bethel City Council is requesting a service needs assessment from the Federal Department of Transportation to determine if the Y-K Delta region has enough passenger air flights to meet the needs of the region.
The council found that Bethel meets the requirements to qualify for a federal aid program, known as Essential Air Services or EAS, which guarantees small communities commercial air service by offering subsidies to airlines.
“So the funding goes to carriers, I want to be clear. It's not, like, funding that can be used for any sort of infrastructure or whatnot,” explained Dylan Blankenship, a development specialist for the statewide aviation division of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Facilities. “Bethel is probably interested in this to become more attractive for additional carriers.”
While the region spans 59,000 square miles, almost twice the size of Ireland, people from all of the Y-K Delta’s 56 village communities route through Bethel because it has the only airport large enough to service large passenger flights to Anchorage.
The federal subsidy program was created in 1978, the same year Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, which allowed airlines to set their own fares and routes. Many airports adopted a hub-and-spoke system. This means that they use a few major airports as central connecting points, and eliminate many nonstop flights to inconvenient locations. So the government put the EAS subsidy program in place to guarantee that flights would still go to remote locations.
Blankenship said that given the vital role of aviation in rural Alaska many communities want to qualify, and 60 places in Alaska currently benefit from those subsidies.
“We’re happy to take any help we can get, and I'm sure the carriers are as well,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship also said that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is good about recognizing the extra need in Alaska because 82% of communities in the state are off the road system.
“There are some unique things that we have that the lower 48 doesn't as far as getting this service,” said Blankenship.
Airports like Bethel’s are especially vital. It connects all of the Y-K Delta to the road system and advanced medical treatment.
“I feel like this is something that I've been kind of thinking about for a long time because we have so much air traffic here in Bethel,” said Bethel City Council member Sophie Swope. “Because we have the most highly concentrated amount of villages in our region and Bethel is the main hub for it, like, everything.”
Swope proposed the resolution to apply for the assessment.
“I really just had the question for our city clerk. And I was like, well, is there anything that we could do as a city council to maybe get, like, that third flight back from Alaska Airlines?” Swope said. “And thankfully, our city clerk was very willing to really look into it. She delved a lot farther than I thought she would.”
Bethel City Clerk Lori Strickler found that the last time the community had a study to determine if it qualified for the federal airport subsidy was in 1980. At the time, they determined Bethel should have 16 large aircraft flights a week during the peak season, and 14 during off season.
That year, Bethel had just over 3,500 residents. Today, Bethel has approximately 6,300 residents. Yet even though Bethel has nearly doubled in size, it actually averaged almost half the number of departure flights in 2021 than it did in 2002, dropping from an average of 24 flights a week to 13.
With many flights inevitably canceled due to weather conditions, it’s hard and expensive to find a place to stay if you get stuck in Bethel. Swope said that the housing crisis that hit the entire state hit Bethel hard.
“And us being the hub for health care, transportation, groceries, and everything, I don't know. When people are unable to fly out to Anchorage for their medical appointment, that has, like, this cascading effect of, you know, taking up hotel space here in Bethel or just lodging in general, and then it extends how long they have to wait until they get their care in Anchorage,” Swope said.
So Swope wanted to see if Bethel could qualify, and it was her first resolution to pass at city council. Council members are hoping to get ONC and a couple other local entities to sign on too before they send it to the Federal Department of Transportation. Still, this is just a step.
“Actually, I’ve thought about it before and I was thinking about one day having an airline that was specifically for, like, caskets that are going out into the villages. Because it's so hard to load caskets into little tiny airplanes that have to go back to their village,” Swope said.
