Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport (ANC) Information

Where is Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport? Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is the major airport in the United States state of Alaska located 4 nautical miles (7 km) southwest of downtown Anchorage.

 

Constructed in 1951 as Anchorage International Airport, it was renamed by the Alaska Legislature in 2000 to honour former long-standing U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. The naming was unusual since Ted Stevens is still living and was active in the Senate at the time of the renaming. It is Alaska Airlines' second-largest hub, after Seattle. It is also a major cargo hub and, as of 2008, ranks as the world's fifth-busiest airport by cargo traffic, after Memphis, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. The majority of passenger flight operations are on Alaska Airlines to and from Seattle (an average of 20 flights per day) and Fairbanks (an average of 13 flights per day).

 

Anchorage was a common stopover for passengers flying to East Asia from the 1960s to the 1980s because U.S., Asian, and Western European aircraft could not fly over Soviet airspace, and because they did not have the range that modern-day aircraft have. Today, many cargo carriers continue to use Anchorage. Some passenger aircraft still stop at Anchorage on flights between Asia and the eastern United States.

 

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport's traffic has hovered around the five million mark for the last 10 years, 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 one million passengers last year. Anchorage traffic peaks in June, July and August when passenger numbers are twice as high as between October and April.

 

FedEx Express and United Parcel Service operate major hubs at Anchorage International for cargo heading to and from the Far East. NWA Cargo also operates a major hub at the airport. 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 Far East countries increases and plan to expand their Anchorage facilities comparatively. The United States Postal Service also operates a large sectional center facility (SCF) for the 995xx ZIP codes. It processes mail and parcels headed to and from all Alaska cities.

 

Anchorage is also envisioned as a future connecting point for air traffic to the Russian Far East. During the summer season 2008, there was one weekly flight to Russia by Vladivostok Air. Also, there are plans to add flights to Sakhalin in the near future to meet the demands of U.S. oil companies. 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.

Additional Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport information may be found by visiting their official website below.

• Official ANC Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport Website