flights (Anchorage: purchase, construction, cheapest)

[warptman]

My flight to London in May is going to be painful. Bethel/Anchorage/Salt Lake/New York/London. Coming home will be London/Cincinnati/Anchorage/Bethel. Really looking forward to 20 hours on a plane.

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by warptman

My flight to London in May is going to be painful. Bethel/Anchorage/Salt Lake/New York/London. Coming home will be London/Cincinnati/Anchorage/Bethel. Really looking forward to 20 hours on a plane.

Oh wow, sorry there o' warpt'd one, I can hardly gauge your anticipation level, all those hours on a plane with all the fun activities they take such pride in create-ing, lucky you!!! I do hope you've brought along some good reading material, Stephen J. Gould, Mark Twain, Frederick Forsyth, if you take a comprehensive tome on Shakespeare, William, at the end of 20 hours you will be thinking in iambic pentameter......and rhyming! Oh, Lucky You. At least London can be fun, the weather is horrible, but....after Alaska???? would be a perspective thing I suppose. London is not known for great restaurants, the regular English fare is not quite fit for human consumtion, but a few ethnic restaurants, like Thai, or Italian, will be good, that is if the place can be found, tip the cabbie well. Been there a few times, the people are warmer than their climate, ....Wait.... this sounds vaguely familiar.

[birkland]

Originally Posted by Sweden

I so wish they did... 26 hours something of flying and waiting at the airports when you could just fly over the North Pole...
I know I asked Rance this once, why they don't, and it's probably because if something happened, it would be difficult to come to rescue the airplane in need, but, wouldn't it be difficult to do a rescue operation over the Atlantic as well?

No sourdoughs up there who remember that Anchorage was once the "crossroads of the air world"? In the olden days (ca. 1970) many Europe to Asia flights flew "over the pole," although not literally. They did fly from Europe to Anchorage to refuel, and then on to Asia, and vice versa. My mom flew from Anchorage to Copenhagen in 1971. One could listen on the air radio and hear Lufthansa, Air France, Japan Air Lines, SAS, and others--you could often tell by the pilots' accents.

The north pole is not military airspace--it's international airspace. The the rescues would be not much more daunting than rescues in the Aleutians, in Iceland/Greenland, or along other great circle routes. And with advanced navigation systems, navigating close to the N. Pole is not terribly difficult.

What changed? (1) longer range jets, could fly further than DC 8s and 707s (2) the opening of Russian airspace in the early 1990s, yielding (3) more direct flights without refueling stops from Asia to Europe.

One could sometimes book flights on the ANC-Europe or ANC-Asia legs of these flights, but, to the extent that passenger jets still refuel at ANC, this is just a stop, not a place to board or disembark. There's not much of a market for service from Anchorage direct to Europe (just like there isn't from Spokane, Des Moines, etc.) The big foreign jets you see at ANC tend to be freighters.

Sorry for the long post; too much reminiscing, I think. I miss the days of the refueling passenger planes--it made me feel, growing up in Anchorage, a part of the bigger world. It was fun.

[Rance]

Originally Posted by warptman

My flight to London in May is going to be painful. Bethel/Anchorage/Salt Lake/New York/London. Coming home will be London/Cincinnati/Anchorage/Bethel. Really looking forward to 20 hours on a plane.

Bummer dude! On the 30th, I'm going from Anch to Chicago to Stockholm and the same route coming home. Only 15 hours of flight time.

[Daniel_T]

I know a couple years ago when i was scheduled to go to Germany from Anchorage for a school trip, our flight was nonstop over the ice cap to make the flight A LOT shorter than if you connected in the Lower 48.

[ASpilot2be]

Originally Posted by Daniel_T

I know a couple years ago when i was scheduled to go to Germany from Anchorage for a school trip, our flight was nonstop over the ice cap to make the flight A LOT shorter than if you connected in the Lower 48.

The Great Circle route does a wonderful job of shortening flights.

[cobolt]

Talk about long flights....my first duty station in the Navy was Guam and I was flying there from San Diego. It was around a 20 hour flight San Diego/LAX/Honolulu/Tokyo/Guam.....and because you cross the international dateline, you get there the day you left, even though you'd been flying for a day!! So on your plane ticket when you look at the times, it looks like you've been flying 30 minutes...gee it felt like 20 hours!!

[Barkingowl]

Are you flying first class warpt?

[warptman]

Nope, but I'm going to see how much an upgrade is going to cost. I know it'll be worth it to be in a bigger seat for all that flying. I'll check when I get to the counter.

[Barkingowl]

Originally Posted by warptman

Nope, but I'm going to see how much an upgrade is going to cost. I know it'll be worth it to be in a bigger seat for all that flying. I'll check when I get to the counter.

The seats are a lot roomier. The free alcohol & cookies are nice too.