Ketchikan International Airport

Ketchikan International Airport sits on Gravina Island, across the Tongass Narrows from the town of Ketchikan in Alaska's southeast panhandle. Before it opened in 1973, the community depended almost entirely on floatplanes and a small seaplane base. Steep, rain soaked terrain around Ketchikan left nowhere flat enough for a paved runway. Engineers solved the problem by blasting and filling a shelf of rock on the island across from town.

That work created a single strip long enough for jet planes. The airport's biggest quirk has always been getting there. There is no bridge, so passengers reach the terminal on a short state run ferry. It crosses the narrows quickly, in just a few minutes. A federally funded plan to replace that ferry with the Gravina Island Bridge became a national symbol of wasteful spending in 2005.

Critics nicknamed it the Bridge to Nowhere, and the project was eventually dropped. Since opening, Ketchikan has been a stop on Alaska Airlines' southeast milk run, a daily jet route hopping between panhandle towns with no roads linking them together. Ketchikan is also one of Alaska's busiest cruise ports. Summer traffic swells with visitors, while winter schedules shrink to flights carrying mail, freight, and residents.

Ketchikan flies from a single runway, 11/29, about 7,500 feet long, built along a narrow bench of filled rock with water at both ends and forested slopes close by. The compact, single level terminal handles a handful of daily Boeing 737 flights. Alaska Airlines also runs dedicated cargo planes alongside its passenger jets in the panhandle, so mail and freight matter as much as travelers.

Weather is the constant operating factor here. Low clouds, heavy rain, and crosswinds off the narrows regularly force flight diversions or overflights. Floatplane operators work separately from the Ketchikan harbor seaplane base located in town itself.