Originally Posted by
jlemon
Ah, sounds like the runway at Dutch was even shorter back then. I think it's still only 4,500 feet in length these days.....which must have made life interesting at times for Boeing 737 combi flight crews back when DUT had jet service.
So let's move up the chain a bit and have that 727 charter service land at Cold Bay....although I haven't a clue concerning the company Alaska Airlines was operating for. Might have been another oil & gas company that was conducting offshore exploratory drilling in the area....or perhaps it was actually a mining outfit.
I'll reveal the answer. The contractor was the US Atomic Energy Commission and the flight route was SEA-xANC-AHT - Amchitka Island. The US conducted several underground nuclear tests below Amchitka; the last one was the Cannikin test in November, 1971. This 5 megaton test was the largest underground test ever conducted by the US, and opposition to the test resulted in the protest boat being renamed
Greenpeace, from which emerged... Greenpeace.
The AEC allowed any federal employees to ride on the twice-a-week charter between Seattle and Anchorage, and as I was a federal employee at the time I partook of this perk on a number of occasions. The only thing unusual about the flight was the northbound security, which was, shall we say, intense? Like you were weighed getting on and getting off, and if you weighed less on disembarkation you were actually asked if you'd used the loo during the flight. I presume they weighed the tanks? TMI in my opinion.
Originally Posted by
WHBM
Did Reeve ever run flights with the Electra, scheduled or charter, to the Soviet Union ?
No. It wasn't until AS ran its services into eastern Russia (5 or 6 different destinations) that there was commercial service from the US into that part of the world.
Bob Reeve, and his son Dick after him, made their living out of hauling the mail and service personnel out the chain, along with fishermen and cannery workers. I doubt if either of them would have been caught dead carrying commies. Every year at Christmas passengers got a little bragging sheet from RAA celebrating another year without federal subsidies being received by the airline. This was when a round trip from Anchorage to Dutch or to the Pribilofs cost over $1000. Hooray for you, we all thought. As if.