Bids open for flights to seven roadless Alaska communities

The U.S. Department of Transportation has reopened subsidized air service contracts for six Alaska communities over the past month and asked King Cove residents what they think of theirs.

Essential Air Service pays carriers to keep scheduled flights running to places too small or too remote to support commercial service on their own. It covers 65 Alaska communities, more than half the national total of 112 elsewhere, plus Little Diomede under a related program.

Ekwok, on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay, has the later of two bid deadlines. The department wants proposals by Oct. 7 for service starting March 1, 2027. Grant Aviation holds the route now, flying three round trips a week to Dillingham on six-seat Cessna 207s under a two-year award that pays $252,517 the first year and about $276,000 the second.

Angoon, Elfin Cove, Pelican and Tenakee are bundled together, with bids due Oct. 1 for a term starting Feb. 1, 2027. Carriers may bid on one community or all four. Alaska Seaplanes has flown all of them out of Juneau since a four-year award in December 2022 that expires Jan. 31. What the government pays for those routes is not in the docket records reviewed.

Lake Minchumina is further along. Two carriers, Wright Air and Everts Air Alaska, filed bids Sept. 3, and the department asked for community comment the same day.

King Cove is at the earliest stage, with the department seeking comment on who flies there and on what terms. That is separate from the community's long effort to build a road to Cold Bay.

One thing is changing for everyone. The cap on average subsidy per passenger drops to $850 on Oct. 1, 2026, from $1,000. Federal law exempts Alaska and Hawaii from several other tests, including a rule requiring at least 10 passengers a day and one requiring that a community had service in 2010 or 2011.

The dockets also carry notices from last fall about a funding lapse in the program, followed by amended funding notices.

What the records do not say is how many people actually fly these routes, what they pay, or whether any of the current carriers intends to bid again.