Ted Stevens Int'l, Anchorage, AK, USA - 13/04/2008

Having spent the morning with John Reffett and his pair of C-119s at Palmer, he suggested the afternoon wouldn't be a bad time to visit his 'day job' with Northern Air Cargo at Anchorage.

Unlike their facility at Fairbanks, the one at Anchorage is very much alive and well. Currently there are five active aircraft on their books - two DC-6s and three 737-200Fs.

In the hangar was one of the three ex-Delta Airlines 732s receiving some attention.

Out on the ramp were three DC-6s (the two active ones plus an example reduced to spares recovery) and the other two 732s.

The active DC-6s are N2907F and N6174C. The first mentioned began life as a C-118A on the 21st of April 1955 when delivered to the USAF Military Air Transport Service (MATS). After 21 years of military service it was sold on to Cryderman Air Service and after passing through many hands finally ended up in Alaska in the care of NAC in 1990. NAC themselves subsequently performed the upgrades to bring the aircraft up to DC-6A standard.

The other aircraft, N6174C was built as a DC-6A - the freighter version - and unlike the vast majority of DC-6s still serving in Alaska, was delivered straight into civillian hands with Flying Tigers in 1954. Over the next 48 years it saw action with a number of other operators, including Zantop and Conifair, before NAC took it under their charge in 2002.

As stated earlier, the 737-200s are ex-Delta Airlines airframes that have been converted from passenger configuration into freighters. NAC bought them to replace their ageing 727F fleet.

N322DL is the most interesting of the three, having been fitted out with a special 'Gravel Kit', allowing operation onto unprepared strips. The modification process sees changes made to the undercarriage and also to the undersides of the engines to prevent gravel ingestion. At the time of our visit it hadn't actually been used for real.

Quite what the future is for NAC remains to be seen. While the 737s are more economical to operate, they're unable to get into and out of some of the smaller strips that the DC-6s currently serve.

And that was that!

We stopped by at the Pennair offices to see if we could get a look around but no-one was able to do so at that time, so we made do with a few shots from over the fence.

With the overcast skies we figured we'd give the mound on the other side of the runway another bash. While we were there we caught our only Evergreen Lump of the trip, as well as a couple of opposite end arrivals that rather took us by surprise!

With it being Sunday most of the cargo operators were having a well earned day off, so we didn't hang around long before we called it a day ourselves.

Mexican food for dinner! :-)