{"id":2856,"date":"2007-04-14T15:19:59","date_gmt":"2007-04-14T15:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2007-04-14T15:19:59","modified_gmt":"2007-04-14T15:19:59","slug":"arctic_eagles_b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2856","title":{"rendered":"Arctic Eagles Bid Mud Hens Farewell at Alaska Airlines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.emailthis.clickability.com\/et\/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&amp;etMailToID=1966851400\">Susan Carey<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>They called themselves the Arctic Eagles. For years, they flew Alaska Airlines passengers on the lonely routes from here to 20 remote outposts across the nation&#8217;s largest state. With limited instruments and little air-traffic control, they faced blizzards, bear heads, gravel runways and volcanic eruptions.<\/p>\n<p>But after 25 years, the Eagles are being disbanded.<\/p>\n<p>Alaska Air two weeks ago retired the last of its dedicated fleet of banged-up old Boeing 737-200s affectionately known as &#8220;mud hens.&#8221; As the airline expands its routes, it is sending the roughly 60 pilots onto newer aircraft that they&#8217;ll have to fly to California, Mexico and the East Coast as well as the Alaskan destinations.<\/p>\n<p>Alaska is no longer their exclusive fief, either. Some of the airline&#8217;s other pilots will be able to fly the Arctic routes as long as they&#8217;re &#8220;checked out&#8221; on some of the most demanding airports.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I flew on one of these Alaska Air flights years ago, it took a few tries to land at the fogged in airport.  Sat next to a woman who lost her husband &#8211; an air taxi pilot &#8211; in a crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Susan Carey: They called themselves the Arctic Eagles. For years, they flew Alaska Airlines passengers on the lonely routes from here to 20 remote outposts across the nation&#8217;s largest state. With limited instruments and little air-traffic control, they faced blizzards, bear heads, gravel runways and volcanic eruptions. But after 25 years, the Eagles are being [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}