New airline bets you’ll stop in Alaska for a cheaper flight to Asia

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/>