Alaska

SEATTLE — Alaska Airlines said Sunday it agreed to buy Hawaiian Airlines in a $1.9 billion deal, including debt, putting it on track for a potential clash with a Biden administration that has shown wariness about higher fares in the industry. The combined company would keep both airlines’ brands, rooted in the nation’s 49th and 50th states. Alaska will pay $18 in cash for each share of Hawaiian, whose stock closed Friday at $4.86 after losing just over half its value in the year so far. The deal also includes $900…

A new paper published in Science says that as glacier ice melts, new land and rivers are being revealed in the ice-covered transboundary region shared by northern B.C., Alaska, and the Yukon. The peer-reviewed paper was a collaboration among researchers from Simon Fraser University, the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs' Office, the University of Montana Flathead Lake Biological Station, and Taku River Tlingit First Nation.Researchers say that for Pacific salmon, these emerging territories may present an opportunity to offset…

Think about everything that happens as you arrive at an airport: the sensory overload of honking horns and police telling drivers to “keep moving” on the Departures level. Inside the ticketing area, you find anxious, luggage-toting travelers trying to make their way to the right line.Checking a bag? Head to a kiosk and enter your record locator.“Is this your trip?” the kiosk asks. (Yes.)“What do you need to do? Print a boarding pass? Check a bag? Change a seat? Purchase a mileage multiplier for $12.99? Hear about our…

Apple introduced its first mixed-reality headset earlier this year. The Vision Pro marks Apple's entry into a new product category for the first time in a while, but Apple isn't planning on slowing down now. With the Vision Pro yet to actually go on sale, Apple is already making progress on the sequel, according to a new report.A new report by Macrumors sheds light on the development of this next-gen Vision Pro, which is apparently codenamed Project Alaska. The report had some details on what we can expect from the…

The Arcturus satellite is seen en route to geosynchronous orbit.AstranisSatellite internet service provider Astranis said Friday its first commercial satellite in orbit, which was intended to provide coverage to Alaska, has malfunctioned. A backup satellite is planned for the spring.It's an early setback for a unique approach to providing internet service to underserved communities in remote locations. Astranis announced in May that Arcturus was working "perfectly" and could begin servicing Alaskans as soon as…

“If we’ve lost the ice, we’ve lost the 2-degree water,” Michael Litzow, shellfish assessment program manager with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told me. “Cold water, it’s their niche—they’re an Arctic animal.”The snow crab may rebound in a few years, so long as there aren’t any periods of warm water. But if warming trends continue, as scientists predict, the marine heat waves will return, pressuring the crab population again.Bones litter the wild part of St. Paul Island like Ezekiel’s Valley in the…

Weather is big news in Alaska. In a place where many people’s lives and livelihoods are directly tied to the environment, knowing what’s in the forecast is often a question of survival. Very soon though, the state’s most reliable source of meteorology media is set to disappear.Arctic Blast to Send U.S. into Dangerous Deep Freeze, Imperiling Holiday Travel“Alaska Weather,” a daily 30-minute TV show that has broadcast across Alaska for the past 47 years, is going off the air due to a lack of funds. In lieu of the news,…

Satellite internet competitors OneWeb and SpaceX are in the running to reconnect Alaskans after ice damaged a sub-sea fiber-optic cable in the Arctic Ocean, as reported by numerous local outlets. While repairs are expected to take an additional six to eight weeks, satellites could help locals weather the widespread outage.Last week, residents in the rural towns of Utqiaġvik, Point Hope, Wainwright, Kotzebue, Nome, and other communities found themselves without internet or cellular connectivity when the 1,200-mile fiber…

Megathrust observing capacity. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf9299 Earthquakes are caused by the movement of the tectonic plates that make up Earth's crust. Off the coast of Alaska, the Pacific plate thrusts underneath the North American plate creating enormous pressure at the Alaska-Aleutian fault. Between 2020 and 2021, the two plates slipped along this fault, producing a series of earthquakes,…

Screengrab via YouTube Now that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is just a month or so from exploding onto theater screens, it makes me yearn for a movie adaptation of a much lesser-known tale from the nuclear age in which hydrogen bombs were almost detonated in Alaska — which by all accounts would have had a devastating effect on everything from nearby indigenous populations to the delicate ecosystem.  Growing up in Alaska, I had no idea the Last Frontier was almost the site of not just one such explosion, but…