Day Twenty-One: The Pacific Crossing – Sapporo to Unalaska

We had just finished our day in Sapporo and were getting ready to leave for the overnight flight across the Pacific when the chief pilot came to us with news that looked likely to end the trip altogether. There was a NOTAM out at Adak reporting that the Instrument Landing Systems was not working, and to make matters worse, the local weather there was showing fog.

The route would take us from Sapporo to Kushiro to Adak to Unalaska, and it carried two points of no return. The first was the point past which we could no longer turn back to Kushiro. The second was the point at which we passed the only alternate, a U.S. military airfield, where we could’ve landed, but would surely not have been welcomed.

There was another problem. All of the planning had assumed twenty-seven to thirty-eight knots of tailwind, which was the mean May and June tailwind of the past three years. However, the typhoon that had been chasing us through Japan, had slowed down the winds, to only seven knots. This was as it spins counterclockwise dragging the wind out of the region, and giving us far less tailwind than we had counted on. So the doubts began to pile up. The tailwind was poor, the ILS was down, there was fog, and the leg ran across the top of the North Pacific with almost no alternates, other than those that sat in Russian airspace.

We called the handler and the airport manager several times and still could not get a clear answer on whether a landing was possible, so we began drafting an alternate plan. That plan had us flying back the way we had come, since the pilots were keeping safety in mind and were not confident about pushing on over the Aleutians.

Just as everyone had made peace with turning around, the chief pilot made one last phone call and somehow got the airport manager in Adak on the line. He turned out to be German, which was a surprise given that twenty-five people live on the island. He told us, quite simply, that no plane had ever failed to land there because of fog. We placed our full trust in a man none of us had ever met, largely because he spoke German, scrapped the route home, and decided to go for it.

The flight ran from Japan to Alaska with two fuel stops. The first was in Kushiro, where we had to plan for a departure between 8:30-8:45 in the evening. The airport closed at 8:45, and we needed every minute we could get to make sure that Adak, our second fuel stop, would already be open by the time we arrived. The strange part of this flight was the clock. We left Kushiro at around half past eight on Saturday evening, flew for roughly five hours, and landed in Adak at half past seven in the morning, on the same day. We had effectively been handed a forty-two hour June 6th. With so many moving parts, and the Kushiro stop needing to be timed to the minute, it made for a strenuous night, and the flying was heavy on the pilots.

Day Twenty-Two: Adak & Unalaska

We landed in Adak and were met by Daniel, the German who had talked us into coming. We fueled up and spoke with him for a while. Adak, it turns out, is popular with bird watchers, and that appears to be about the extent of it. When we went to restart the engines, the battery began to drain. The battery which normally runs on 24V, can dip to 17-18V during engine start-up. However, this time it dropped several times below 16V. If it had dropped below 15V, we would’ve had a battery failure, where the plane prevents a restart. Consequently, a mechanic would have had to be flown in, which would surely have ended the trip. Luckily, the engined came to live and we didn’t have to spend the next couple of days bird watching.

Having arrived safely in Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, we cleared customs and went to the hotel, the Grand Aleutian. It does not live up to its name, and is grand in no sense of the word. There was little to hold our attention in the way of sightseeing, and the time change had left everyone exhausted, so we slept until it was time for dinner at the Norwegian Rat Saloon. The portions were enormous, and the food was a sharp contrast to what we had grown used to in Japan. Still tired, and mindful of the early flight to Fairbanks, we went to bed.

Day Twenty-Three: Unalaska to Fairbanks

The flight to Fairbanks was uneventful, though it took a while at a little over two hours in the air. We checked in on arrival and spent the afternoon every man for himself. In the evening we went to the Turtle Club, where the portions were once again enormous. Two of us shared a crab combo and were so full by the end of it that neither slept properly.

Day Twenty-Four: Fairbanks

In the morning, we visited the Museum of the North, where we learned about the region’s gold mining history and about the Aleuts and what became of them during the Second World War. We followed it with the planetarium, where a few of the travelers fell asleep. After a quick lunch at a Thai place, since Fairbanks is apparently known for its Thai food, we spent the afternoon resting at the hotel and had dinner at a local spot.

Day Twenty-Five: Fairbanks to Yellowknife

In the morning we flew to Yellowknife, and landing there brought a fresh immigration problem. We were told to take the cash we had on hand out of the plane and bring it to the customs building. What we did not know was that the customs building was not at the airport at all, but on the third floor of an ordinary office block somewhere in Yellowknife. So we now found ourselves having carried cash into the country and needing to declare it. The officer who met us needed a great deal of handholding to understand what the cash was for, which was fuel. After an hour and a half of explaining ourselves and filing the paperwork, including one form that asked to list every country the cash had passed through, we were finally allowed to leave and enjoy the day.

By then it was late afternoon and everyone was worn out from a heavy stretch of travel, so we settled for resting at the hotel, having dinner there, and looking ahead to Greenland the next day. The run from Kushiro to Yellowknife was strenous and sightseeing wise limited, but it was one of the most memorable parts of the trip, especially due to the flying side.