Juneau pilots pay $12 a gallon for fuel, and want an alternative to the airport's only seller

Pilots buying avgas at Juneau International Airport pay $12.26 to $12.63 a gallon, well above the roughly $8 that self-serve fuel runs at Anchorage's Lake Hood and Merrill Field. More than 50 general aviation users have signed a letter asking the city to write a self-serve fuel farm into the airport's master plan.

The draft plan says there is "no unmet demand reported" for aircraft fueling and no known deficiencies. The pilots disagree. "The GA users that have signed this unanimously want an alternate source of AvGas on airport property," wrote airport tenant liaison Nolan Davis, who put the local markup at roughly 33%. The letter doesn't ask the city to fund the project now, only to include it in the plan.

At the center of the complaint is that the airport has a single fuel seller. Aero Services is the only fixed-base operator there, and hangar tenants Michael and Rebecca Cozad note in a separate comment that it is owned by Atlantic Aviation, which they say runs the sole operations in Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan as well. Some pilots tie the cost to safety, saying $12 fuel makes it hard to fly often enough to stay current. "It is detrimental to the general aviation community having fuel prices that are not feasible to fly," flight instructor Jamee Wallis wrote.

The packet contains only the pilots' side. Neither Aero Services nor Atlantic Aviation submitted a response, though Atlantic's public materials generally attribute its pricing to the cost of serving remote markets.

The board takes up the letters as correspondence at its Aug. 13 meeting but has no vote scheduled on the fuel question. The airport manager reviewed the pilots' concerns at a July meeting without committing money, and the master plan is expected to be finished by mid-October, though the board and the Juneau Assembly must still accept it before it takes effect.