Ten Essential Air Service Carriers Join the Network

Ten carriers that operate under the United States Essential Air Service program have been added to the network, with their real schedules, fleets and liveries. The program subsidises scheduled flights to small communities that would otherwise have no airline service, covering around 110 airports in the contiguous states and about 65 in Alaska. The addition comes to 6,758 flights and 593 aircraft.

Five of the new carriers fly the Alaskan network, where most destinations have no road connection and the aircraft carry mail and freight alongside passengers. Bering Air flies 309 routes from Nome, Kotzebue and Unalakleet on Cessna 208 Caravans, Beechcraft 1900Ds, King Airs, CASA 212s and Cessna 408 SkyCouriers. Grant Aviation serves the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Bristol Bay and the Aleutians. Ryan Air operates from seven bases in the west of the state. Warbelow's Air Ventures runs three daily circuits out of Fairbanks, to Minto, Manley Hot Springs and Rampart, to Circle and Central, and to Stevens Village and Beaver. Taquan Air flies floatplanes from Ketchikan to the villages of Prince of Wales Island on de Havilland DHC-2 Beavers and turbine DHC-3 Otters.

In the Lower 48 and Hawaii, Contour Airlines adds 663 routes on 30 seat CRJ200s and ERJ 135, 140 and 145 jets. Denver Air Connection links Denver with Alamosa, Cortez, Pueblo, Alliance, Chadron, McCook and Clovis, plus Ironwood and Thief River Falls further north, on Dornier 328JETs and ERJ 145s. Southern Airways Express flies Cessna Caravans on the mainland and, under the Mokulele name, between the Hawaiian islands. Advanced Air connects Albuquerque and Phoenix with Angel Fire, Silver City and Gallup on King Air 350s and Dornier 328JETs.

SkyWest Airlines is the largest of the ten at 4,947 flights and 399 aircraft. It is also the biggest single Essential Air Service operator, flying around fifty subsidised communities alongside its United Express, Delta Connection, American Eagle and Alaska SkyWest work.

Building these networks needed 236 new airports, most of them Alaskan village strips and seaplane bases. Adding them also closed gaps for carriers that were already here. Cape Air has regained its Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Montana and Puerto Rico routes, which had been missing because those airports were not in the database, and Alaska Airlines now has its Adak service and the Anchorage leg of the Cordova milk run.

The routes were checked against the Department of Transportation award tables: 142 of the 152 contracted city pairs are bookable, and the remaining ten are cases where the docket lists a hub the carrier no longer serves. Fleets were built from the FAA aircraft registry, so registrations, serial numbers and Mode S codes are the real ones.

Three tours have been built on this network, each following routes that are well known in their own right.

The Alaska Milk Run follows Alaska Airlines flight 65 up the Southeast panhandle, Ketchikan to Wrangell to Petersburg to Juneau. It is the stop by stop 737 service those towns depend on, because none of them has a road out, and the Wrangell to Petersburg sector is 27 nautical miles. The tour then continues to Adak, 1,034 nautical miles down the Aleutian chain and the westernmost scheduled jet service in the country, and on to Dutch Harbor and the Pribilof Islands. Twelve legs and 3,733 nautical miles, opening with a twelve minute Taquan floatplane hop to Metlakatla.

The High Country Run takes the highest and most awkward airports in the program: Angel Fire at 8,380 feet, Show Low on the Mogollon Rim, Telluride on its mesa at 9,070 feet, Moab next to Canyonlands, and a finish at West Yellowstone, which shuts for the winter. Ten legs flown by Advanced Air, SkyWest, Contour and Denver Air Connection.

Kalaupapa and the Island Hops works the Hawaiian network in Mokulele Caravans. Its shortest leg is the eight miles down onto the Kalaupapa peninsula, a settlement below the world's tallest sea cliffs that can be reached only by air, by boat or on a mule trail. Twelve legs for just over 500 nautical miles, none of it far above the water.

Each tour carries a completion award and all three run until 17 August 2027.

All ten are listed on the airlines page and their flights can be booked in the usual way.