Alaska-based regional carrier Kenai Aviation ceased operations Monday as its owner declared the business “financially insolvent.”
In a lengthy message posted on Kenai’s website and Facebook page, owner Joel Caldwell said the COVID-19 pandemic saddled the airline with a debt load “that we haven’t been able to get back on top of.”
“Today, the bank is calling that debt,” he wrote. “We have to cease all operations immediately. I am devastated.”
According to the Anchorage Daily News, Kenai had to ground an aircraft for maintenance over the summer, which exacerbated the carrier’s financial difficulties.
Kenai Aviation was formed in 1959 to serve the energy industry in the Cook Inlet. Caldwell purchased the company in 2018.
According to its website, Kenai served Anchorage, Seward, the city of Kenai, and Unalakleet. With the airline’s collapse, Unalakleet will have no regularly scheduled air service, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
Caldwell said he will fight to revive the airline but needs outside support.
“I believe we provide something of value to Alaska,” he wrote. “Something that matters. Something that is worth saving.”
“I refuse to give up,” he added. “I don’t know how. I can’t make promises… We need capital, we need partners, we need a lifeline. That investor is out there, we just need to find them. One promise that you can hold me to is that, if at all possible, I will find that life line.”
Regional carriers in Alaska have struggled with the lingering financial effects of the COVID-19 shutdown and higher costs in the years since. In August, Ravn Alaska, at one time the state’s largest rural airline, went out of business and canceled its one remaining route between Anchorage and Valdez.
The collapse of regional service is felt acutely in Alaska’s far-flung and relatively isolated rural communities, since many cannot be reached easily or at all by land.
