
DISCLAIMER: USE AT YOR OWN RISK! Published 020502

This is the route followed by anyone who has ever cruised Alaska from Vancouver, BC, Canada. The ship takes one load of pax from Vancouver, BC [CYVR] to Seward and offloads them to be bussed or railed to PANC at Anchorage for the return flight back to CYVR. Another group, is meanwhile, flown CYVR-PANC, and they also are delivered via this route to Seward to board the ship for their cruising experience sailing southward.

This route follows the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Anchorage although the railway tracks are not shown in FS2002. This is also the route followed by Alaska's National Historic Iditarod Trail. The trail heads north from Girdwood and is one of the world's most-famous.

We have to deliver six passengers [pax] who missed the scheduled airline flight to Anchorage. From the parking ramp at Seward [PAWD], we taxi to the active runway for a southerly departure. The King Air's tanks are 44% full which will give us full main tanks in reserve upon landing at Anchorage; this is plenty of fuel for this trip. Known icing condition have been reported with temps -1 and dewpoint -3. This precludes filing IFR as we are not licensed to fly into known icing conditions. VFR conditons are good here but marginal as we appraoch Anchorage. Pax have all signed waivers and it's decided to fly at 3000' for the entire flight. Be certain to keep the altimeter settings current during the trip or terrain avoidance may be compromised (sometimes referred to as a crash).

Use maximum rate-of-climb with full-power climbing out from Seward. Once 2000' is attained, engage the GPS/NAV feature with the autopilot turned ON. A rate-one turn to the left will be initiated and our climb to 3000' will be complete before the turn is. Once 210KIAS is reached, we set power to 87% and pull the prop back to cruise [CTRL-F1]. This gives us a good full-burn and the engines sound good.

That's about it. If you hit the mountain behind Lawing it's because the altimeter was not reset to the current barometric pressure. I hate to be the one to tell you I told you so! Contact ATC anytime you want; flight following will keep the altimeter updated and once approaching HOPER Intn., contact Anchorage for landing instructions. Usually, one gets runway 14, which means you want to fly to BigLake VOR (112.5) after HOPER to get onto the downwind left fo Rwy 14.

Bill Irvine
wji@shaw.ca
