First stop Anchorage Intl. Airport (ANC)

Anchorage Intl. Airport (ANC) 22.06. - 24.06.2019

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (IATA: ANC, ICAO: PANC) is a major airport in the U.S. state of Alaska, located 5 miles (8 km) southwest of downtown Anchorage.The airport is named for Ted Stevens, a U.S. senator from Alaska in office from 1968 to 2009.

N747CE / Everts Air Cargo / DC6F

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport's passenger traffic hovered around the five million mark between 1998 and 2008, apart from in 2002 when the airport suffered a 13% drop in traffic. Fairbanks and Juneau are the next busiest airports though neither managed more than half a million passengers last year. Anchorage traffic peaks in June, July and August when passenger numbers are twice as high as between October and April. Most major U.S. passenger carriers serve ANC, with the majority of passenger flight operations by Alaska Airlines to and from Seattle (an average of 20 flights per day) and Fairbanks (5-7 flights per day).

Anchorage is also envisioned as a future connecting point for air traffic to the Russian Far East. During the summer season 2008, there was one weekly flight to Russia by Vladivostok Air. Yakutia Airlines resumed summer seasonal service to Russia in 2012. Many of Alaska's North Slope workers live either in Anchorage or elsewhere in the Lower 48 states and fly through the airport to their jobs in Prudhoe Bay. As per Federal Aviation Administration records, the airport had 2,599,313 passenger boardings (enplanements) in calendar year 2008, 2,282,666 enplanements in 2009, and 2,342,310 in 2010.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is also a major cargo hub. As of 2015, it ranked as the fourth busiest airport in the world by cargo traffic, after Hong Kong, Memphis, and Shanghai–Pudong.

FedEx Express and UPS Airlines operate major hubs at Anchorage International for cargo heading to and from the Far East.[23] NWA Cargo used to operate a major hub at the airport until December 28, 2009 when it closed all operations for Northwest Cargo at all airports. FedEx Express is the airport's largest cargo facility and can handle as many as 13,400 packages per hour, employing more than 1,200 people and providing a full customs clearance system. United Parcel Service's hub handles about 5,000 parcels per hour. Both companies forecast a large growth in traffic over the next several years as trade with China and other Far East countries increases and plan to expand their Anchorage facilities comparatively.

N560AS / Alaska Airlines / B737-800

N610UP / UPS / B747-8F

All photos are copyright by Martin and Christoph Rogosz