Until the spread of widebody jets in the 1970s, taking a commercial trans-Pacific flight usually involved a refueling or technical stop en route, often in Alaska. Now, a mix of pandemic-era entrepreneurialism and cryptocurrency fervor is birthing a new airline whose strategy is to connect price-sensitive leisure travelers between the US and Asia via a stop in the 49th State. Northern Pacific Airways aims to start flying later this year, pending US regulatory approvals, using single-aisle Boeing 757-200 jets with 197 seats, including 12 in business class. The company plans to charge 10% to 20% less than the economy fares on competing nonstop routes; all its flights will connect through Anchorage. Alaska tourism officials also hope the carrier could become a conduit for an influx of new visitors. Northern Pacific’s initial route map includes the largest metro areas in Japan and South Korea—Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Seoul. In the US, it will fly to Las Vegas, New York-JFK, Orlando, San Francisco, and Ontario, Calif., east of Los Angeles. Its founders say that clearing US border checks in Anchorage will be more expeditious than at busy airports like those in New York or San Francisco. “The numbers are there of how many travelers, and that’s not giving any credit towards spurring new traffic,” says Rob McKinney, CEO of both Anchorage-based Northern Pacific and intrastate carrier Ravn Alaska, and former operations chief at Mokulele Airlines, a regional carrier in Hawaii. “I just believe that if we do the right things with the right machine that it will be a success.”<br/>
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Authorities say no one was injured when an aircraft bound from Las Vegas to Minneapolis returned early Friday for a “hard landing” with a landing gear malfunction at Harry Reid International Airport. Airport, airline and Federal Aviation Administration officials said the right main landing gear of Sun Country Airlines flight 110 collapsed when the Boeing 737 landed about 1:20 a.m. with 50 passengers and six crew members aboard. Everyone deplaned by stairs and returned by bus to the airport terminal. Sun Country CEO Jude Bricker said passengers were being assisted by airline personnel. The aircraft remained on a runway for several hours while crews removed fuel to allow it to be towed to a parking area, airport spokeswoman Melissa DeFrank said. Other airport operations were not affected. A NTSB spokesman said the agency was monitoring the incident but did not immediately begin an investigation.<br/>
Israel said on Sunday that it could halt Israeli airlines' flights to Dubai in the next few days due to a dispute over security arrangements, but is looking at rerouting them to Abu Dhabi instead. An Israeli official said current security arrangements for three Israeli airlines that fly into Dubai International Airport - El Al , Israir and Arkia - were due to expire on Tuesday, leaving negotiators 48 hours to find a solution. Direct flights from Israel to the United Arab Emirates began after the two countries' formalised ties in 2020. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have since visited the Gulf state. Israeli airlines are under the authority of Israel's Shin Bet security service, which said it had encountered differences with its Dubai counterparts that could halt flights, but did not elaborate on what those differences were. "Should the Israeli carriers' flights on this line indeed be halted, the possibility of transferring the Israeli flights to Abu Dhabi is being examined," Shin Bet said. The Dubai government's media office did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Emirati state carrier flydubai would be likely to benefit if Israeli carriers stop flying to Dubai as it operates direct flights to Tel Aviv. Spokespeople for El Al and Israir said their flights to Dubai were on schedule, for now. Arkia had no immediate comment.<br/>
IndiGo, India's biggest airline, expects its revenue to recover from April this year as demand for travel rebounds, its CEO Ronojoy Dutta said on Friday, after the carrier reported its first quarterly profit in two years. Airlines, whose profits have been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic over the last two years, were seeing signs of recovery when the Omicron variant disrupted travel late last year. Dutta said the airline saw a steep fall in bookings after Dec. 15 as India imposed curbs amid rising infections. And while travel is returning slowly due to pent up demand, he expects revenue to be lower in the January to March quarter before recovering. "The worst has come and gone, things are slowly getting better. At least we can say for sure they are not getting worse," Dutta told analysts over a call. IndiGo parent Interglobe Aviation, which operates IndiGo, reported a net profit of 1.28b rupees ($17m) in the three months to Dec. 31, compared with a loss of 6.27b rupees a year earlier. The company said revenue from operations nearly doubled to 92.95b rupees from a year earlier, which Dutta said exceeded the levels seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yields, a metric for profitability, grew 19.2% to 4.41 rupees compared with the previous quarter, despite a 186% rise in fuel prices over the same period. And passenger load factor, or the passenger carrying capacity being used, rose to 80% during the quarter.<br/>