Alaska communications and aviation entities, together with federal and state officials, convened in a summit in Yakutat led by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to collaborate on solutions to reduce weather-related travel delays and boost aviation safety in the state.
“We have 130 weather recording stations in Alaska and at any given time 50% are partially or entirely out of service,” Murkowski said on Aug. 15. The senator, a third-generation Alaskan born and raised in Ketchikan, and later Wrangell, is out to resolve this issue, which has resulted in canceled flights in and out of rural communities.
“Earlier this year, I experienced what many rural Alaskans are all too familiar with, a long delay that forced me to redo my travel plans after Yakutat’s Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) suddenly went down,” Murkowski said.
“As I learned more about the tangled management responsibilities of multiple federal agencies overseeing Alaska’s aviation weather reporting systems, it became obvious there has to be system improvements and greater communication between all stakeholders.”
The summit in Yakutat “allowed us to drill down to the core of the issue and work on solutions,” the senator said.
During the roundtable discussion, several steps to address the issue in Yakutat were identified, including having a community resident become the local weather observer as a part of the Non-Federal Weather Observation Program.
Other steps include establishing battery backup and power systems and moving forward with a project to consolidate Yakutat’s three surface weather observation components in one location with a singular backup power supply. The system is operated by the National Weather Service and Federal Aviation Administration.
The group also discussed improving collaboration across agencies, and policy changes necessary to address the persistent weather observing issues across Alaska.
Yakutat Airport is a focal point for statewide weather observation challenges critical to improvements in aviation safety, Murkowski said.
Telecommunications are part of the challenge. Jeremiah Beckett, CEO of Cordova Telecom Cooperative, said the utility is on track to have new microwave communication services up and running at Yakutat by Thanksgiving, weather dependent. “A lot of those plants are run on diesel generators, and they are very antiquated power systems,” he said.
“It sounds like the power system is from World War II and the FAA did not have backup batteries and generators,” he said of Yakutat’s airport. “The airport does have backup power, but the FAA is not connected to it,” Beckett explained. “We offered to donate our battery bank … and that would help alleviate stress on their power system.”
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