Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport


Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is the primary airport serving the US state of Alaska, located southwest of downtown Anchorage. The airport is named for Ted Stevens, who served as a senator of Alaska from 1968 to 2009. It is included in the Federal Aviation Administration National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2017–2021, in which it is categorized as a medium-hub primary commercial service facility. It is a major cargo hub for trans-Pacific traffic, ranking as one of the world's busiest airports by cargo traffic.

History

Built in 1951, the airport was served in the 1950s by Alaska Airlines, Northwest Orient, Pacific Northern Airlines and Reeve Aleutian Airways, using aircraft ranging from Douglas DC-3s to Boeing 377s, and was also a refuelling stop for Canadian Pacific Air Lines service to the Far East. From 1955 to 2011, the eastern end of the airport's southernmost runway connected to the Kulis Air National Guard Base.
By the mid-1980s the airport's nickname was "Crossroads of the World". Anchorage was a common stopover for passengers flying between Europe and East Asia, because airspace in China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries was off-limits and because the first generation of jets and widebody airliners did not have the range to fly non-stop across the Pacific Ocean. Carriers using Anchorage for this purpose included:
  • Air France, British Airways, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Sabena, Swissair and Spantax all used Anchorage as a stopover point between Europe and the Far East of Asia into the 1980s to 1991.
  • Japan Airlines served Seattle through Anchorage in the early 1960s, and offered service through Anchorage to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, New York City & São Paulo from the 1960s until October 1991. Last JAL flight was JL438 on October 31, 1991, Paris–Charles de Gaulle - Anchorage - Tokyo–Narita.
  • Korean Air used Anchorage as a stopover point for flights between Seoul and both Europe and the continental US in the 1980s. On September 1, 1983, one of these flights, Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet pilot who had mistaken it for a spy plane, after unintentionally violating Soviet airspace.
  • Northwest Orient, the first airline to operate scheduled trans-Pacific service after World War II, used Elmendorf Field and later Anchorage International as a stopover for service between US points and Tokyo as late as the mid-1970s.
  • Scandinavian Airlines began a transpolar flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo via Anchorage on February 24, 1957.
In the mid-1980s airport officials knew that the then-new Boeing 747-400, with a longer range than then-existing aircraft, would decrease stopovers. They did not expect that Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost, towards the end of the Cold War, would open Soviet airspace to flights, causing the decrease to occur sooner than planned. By 1988, 16 airline flights that had previously stopped in Anchorage—each bringing almost $80,000 in revenue to the state—instead flew nonstop over Siberia.
Most scheduled passenger service from Anchorage to Europe and Asia ceased in the early 1990s. Korean Air continued to serve Anchorage three times a week on a yearly scheduled basis until March 2005, which was reduced to three times a week only for the summer season in 2006. China Airlines, the last Asian carrier to serve Anchorage on a regular basis, used Anchorage as an intermediate stop on its Taipei-New York route until 2011, when it rerouted these flights to stop in Osaka. While a few charter passenger aircraft still stop at Anchorage on flights between Asia and the eastern United States, scheduled cargo carriers – which benefit from more volume and thus shorter route segments – continue to use Anchorage frequently. Condor still uses the Frankfurt-Anchorage route on a Airbus A330neo.
In the 1990s, Alaska Airlines and Aeroflot operated services from Anchorage to several destinations in the Russian Far East, including Khabarovsk, Magadan, Petropavlovsk, Vladivostok and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Alaska Airlines pulled out of these markets in 1998 due to insufficient demand, while the Aeroflot services were primarily intended as technical stops en route to Seattle and San Francisco and were cancelled once newer aircraft and nonstop flights became available. Reeve Aleutian Airways, Dalavia and MAVIAL Magadan Airlines also offered service between Anchorage and the Russian Far East at various times, catering to Kamchatka oil exploration and other niche markets.
The airport was renamed in 2000 by the Alaska Legislature to honor then long-standing US Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens survived a crash at the airport in 1978 that killed his wife Ann.
In October 2018, Alaska Governor Bill Walker and Heilongjiang Province Governor Wang Wentao announced plans to connect Anchorage and Harbin Taiping International Airport with year-round, nonstop flights as early as the summer of 2019.
On November 30, 2018, the airport suffered minor damage and was temporarily closed following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in the area. In June 2019, American Airlines switched the Boeing 737-800 on their seasonal route to Phoenix with the Airbus A321neo making them the first airline to use the A321neo at Anchorage. In January 2023, Delta replaced their Boeing 737-900 and 757-200 in favor of the A321neo for their route to Minneapolis-St. Paul.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the airport was briefly the busiest in the United States due to sustained volume of cargo flights through Alaska while passenger travel sharply decreased at other American airports.
Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on airlines, commercial flights between Japan and Western Europe once again overfly Alaska in the eastbound direction. However, due to the advanced range of the airliners used for these flights, such as the Airbus A350, Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the stopover in Anchorage is no longer needed and flights are operated nonstop. Some re-routed cargo flights do however stop in Anchorage, such as Nippon Cargo Airlines Flight 51, which operates Amsterdam - Milan - Anchorage - Tokyo four times weekly.
Southwest Airlines is slated to begin service to Anchorage for the first time on May 15, 2026, with flights from Denver and Las Vegas, the two biggest airports they operate on their network.

Passenger traffic

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 in 2007. Anchorage traffic peaks in June, July and August when passenger numbers are twice as high as between October and April. Most major US passenger carriers serve ANC, with the majority of passenger flight operations by Alaska Airlines to and from Seattle and Fairbanks.
Anchorage was once a minor connecting point for air traffic to the Russian Far East. During the summer season of 2008, there was one weekly flight to Russia by Vladivostok Air. Yakutia Airlines resumed summer seasonal service to Russia in 2012. As of 2025, service to Russia has ended. 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 in calendar year 2008, 2,282,666 enplanements in 2009, and 2,342,310 in 2010.
The nearest other international airports from Anchorage are Fairbanks International Airport and
Juneau International Airport. Fairbanks International Airport is also the second busiest airport in Alaska.

International cargo hub

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is a major cargo hub. In 2023, it ranked as the second busiest cargo airport in the US and the world's fourth-busiest cargo airport. Cargo airlines travelling between Asia and the contiguous US prefer to refuel in Anchorage to carry less fuel and more cargo.
FedEx Express and UPS Airlines operate major hubs at Anchorage International for cargo heading to and from Asia-Pacific. 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 East Asian countries increases and plan to expand their Anchorage facilities comparatively. The United States Postal Service also operates a large sectional center facility for the 995xx ZIP Codes. It processes mail and parcels headed to and from all Alaska cities.
The United States Department of Transportation allows Anchorage and other Alaskan airports to be used as a transfer point for cargo between different aircraft of the same foreign air carrier without applying for special permission, a privilege not available at airports in the contiguous US. In 2020, the airport applied for similar authority for passenger traffic, which would potentially allow foreign airlines to use Anchorage as a connecting hub for international passengers. A similar exemption was previously granted to airports in Puerto Rico.

Facilities and aircraft

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport covers an area of 4,608 acres at an elevation of 151 feet above mean sea level. It has three runways: 7L/25R is 10,600 by 150 feet with an asphalt surface; 7R/25L is 12,400 by 200 feet with an asphalt/concrete surface; 15/33 is 10,865 by 200 feet with an asphalt surface. The airport also has one asphalt helipad that is 100 by 100 feet.
For the 12 months ending April 30, 2019, the airport had 261,961 aircraft operations, an average of 718 per day: 38% scheduled commercial, 32% general aviation, 29% air taxi, and <1% military. At that time there were 109 aircraft based at this airport: 61% multi-engine, 14% helicopter, 15% jet, and 10% single-engine. The FAA projects operations to increase to 334,279 by 2030, or 918.882 operations per day.
The airport also has a seaplane base adjacent to it, so that seaplanes and floatplanes can take off and land. The Lake Hood Seaplane Base, adjacent to Anchorage Airport, is the busiest seaplane base in the world.