Scheduled floatplane service from downtown Ketchikan to six coastal villages, every flying day of the week. Charters, freight, and flightseeing when the ceiling allows. We have been reading this weather since 1987.
Pick a stop on the chart or in the list. Fares are one way per seat, freight rides on the same plane you do, and every schedule below carries the standing asterisk of Southeast Alaska: weather permitting.
Tap the chart or the list. The plane knows the way.
Every route below 1,000 feet, most of it below 500. Bring a window seat attitude.
Departures from the Kestrel dock in Ketchikan. A dot means we fly that day. Return flights leave the village about 20 minutes after we land, once the mail and the groceries are swapped out.
| Destination | Departs | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saltery Cove | 07:15 | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | – |
| Saltery Cove | 15:30 | ● | – | ● | – | ● | – | – |
| Bell Harbor | 08:00 | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Bell Harbor | 16:15 | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | – | – |
| Ptarmigan Bay | 09:30 | – | ● | – | ● | – | ● | – |
| Wrack Point | 10:45 | ● | – | ● | – | ● | ● | – |
| Wrack Point | 17:00 | – | – | – | – | ● | – | – |
| Kelp Landing | 12:30 | ● | ● | – | ● | ● | – | – |
| Naukati West | 13:45 | ● | – | – | ● | – | – | – |
The scheduled runs are pretty enough that people ask if they can just ride along. You can do better. Three tours, all low and slow, all narrated by a pilot who has been asked every question at least twice.
Granite walls, hanging waterfalls, and a lake landing where the only sound after shutdown is the water dripping off the floats. We shut the engine down for ten minutes so you can hear what a fjord sounds like. It sounds like nothing, and it is worth the fare.
Minimum 3 seats. Lake landing subject to wind.
North past the ice fields for a slow orbit over blue crevasses and a face that calves when it feels like it. You will take about 400 photos. Roughly 12 of them will do the color justice, and that is not your camera's fault.
Minimum 4 seats. Bring sunglasses, the ice is loud in the visual sense.
Summer humpbacks feed the length of the channel and do not care that you are on a schedule. We fly the shoreline at a respectful altitude and let the whales run the show. Sightings are common. Guarantees are for engine maintenance, not wildlife.
Minimum 3 seats. June through September.
Three radial-engine floatplanes, each older than most of our pilots and better maintained than most of their trucks. Every airframe gets a full inspection cycle over the winter, whether it complains or not.
"Marge"
"Ruthie"
"Pete"
Floatplane travel has a few house rules. None of them are negotiable and all of them exist because of a specific Tuesday we could tell you about.
You, your bags, your dog, and the case of soda for your cousin. Weight and balance is the whole game in a floatplane, so the scale at the dock is not a suggestion. Nobody is judging. The airplane is, a little.
Soft duffels pack into a float compartment. Hard rollaboard suitcases do not, and they will ride the next freight run instead of with you. Firearms unloaded and cased, fuel and bear spray travel as declared freight only.
We fly visual, low, and in some of the wettest air in North America. If dispatch delays your flight, it is because the pass is closed, not because we lost interest. Build a spare half day into any connection to a jet.
Every dock in Southeast is wet, tilted, or both, and the beach landings are exactly what they sound like. Brown rubber boots are the regional dress shoe. Sneakers are how visitors identify themselves.
Loading a floatplane is a small logistics exercise involving mail sacks, groceries, and occasionally a kayak. Early passengers get the good seats. Late passengers get to watch us leave, which is scenic but unsatisfying.
Life vests under the seats, exits shown before every takeoff, and the pilot has the final word on load and weather with no exceptions for anyone's schedule, including ours. We have kept a clean sheet since 1987 by being boring about exactly this.
Lodge drops, crew swaps, cabin hauls, and the occasional wedding party that wanted to arrive with style and 900 pounds of freight capacity. Tell us the where and the when, dispatch will price the how.