Wien Alaska Airlines

Fairchild F27-A Propjet over The University of Alaska near Fairbanks

Wien Alaska Airlines operated in Alaska for 60 years, from 1924 to 1984. The Fairchild F-27 was a 1950's era twin-turboprop passenger aircraft. Posthip Scott sent me the above photo. Rooting around for more info I uncovered a cache of old photos on Alaska's Digital Archives. Some of them are pretty cool.

AIRCRAFT

First airplane operation in Nome - Seward peninsula area

Noel Wien in his Hisso Standard (likely a Standard-J powered by a Hispano-Suiza engine) in 1927 on first commercial flight to Nome

Wien first commercial flight

Noel Wien with a Ford Trimotor on skis

Ford Trimotor at Harding Lake

Howard Hughes stops in Fairbanks

F27A turboprop
Notice the long engine nacelles and the long legs on the main landing gear

CARGO

Baby Walrus being fed

Reindeer

Reindeer

Strange Cargo - A couple hundred pounds of jade and moose antlers

Wolf Carcass

Small plane fully loaded

Loading Wien tour bus abourd a C82 Flying Boxcar at Fairbanks

Old and new transport methods meet up

Dogs fly too

CONDITIONS

F-27A, Juneau Airport, Mountains, Glacier

Loading Wien Norseman Floatplane at Kotzebue Alaska
Yes, floatplanes can land on water, but do you want to do that when there are chunks of ice there as well?

Signs of Spring
Changing from skis to floats

Sigurd Wien by Cessna aircraft on sea ice at Nome
That's the ocean just past the dogs on the left hand side. 'Sea ice' means he landed on an ice berg.

LIFE

Christine Steve post mistress and agent
Stebbins Alaska

Eskimo lady pegging out large seal skins to dry at Point Hope

Wien Alaska Airlines Route Map

P.S. It took some time to download all the photos from the Alaskan archive (could they still be using dial up modems?) and I don't really have any place else on the net where I can display them, and then find them reliably. Nothing else has really panned out. Picasa is dead. Well, it's there, but it's a mausoleum. Nothing lives there. Flickr is for you own photos, not stuff you stole. Tumblr gives you a channel and lets you post pictures, but it's much the same as Blogger. Pinterest has lots of pictures, but no information about said pictures, like where they came from, or what's in the picture, or why it's there or really anything at all.

P.P.S. Most of the location names link to the same Google Map which has all the named locations plotted, but we don't have anything on the North Coast. That will have to wait for oil exploration.