The sexiest ride in the skies

Pilot Teresa Dodson

By Jack Hamann
Special to CNN.com

I felt like Humphrey Bogart.

As we stepped onto the Anchorage International Airport tarmac, the silver skin of our Lockheed 188 Electra gleamed in the sun. It wasn't Casablanca, and Ingrid Bergman was nowhere in sight, but the sight of that plane made me want to grab my wife's elbow and growl, "Here's looking at you, kid."

The Electra is the aircraft version of a 1954 Studebaker: fat, comfy. It's got four oversized propeller engines and a pleasantly plump body.

Reeve Aleutian Air is a small, family-run operation with only five planes: two Boeing 727s and three Electras. Reeve likes the L188 because it can fly lower and slower than jets, a crucial asset when your routes include the fog-shrouded, storm-battered Aleutian and Pribilof Islands. These planes fly when others are grounded.

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Reeve is nearly tireless, shuttling fishermen, soldiers and natives between remote Bering Sea islands and the Alaska mainland. But many passengers book flights on Reeve simply because it flies the only commercial passenger Electras in the world.

And there are few airplanes like them in the world. The interiors are more like a train's than a plane's: high ceilings, wide aisles, big windows and humane legroom. The décor shows its age, but in a retro sort of way. The aqua paint trim looks like it could have come off that Studebaker.

At the controls was John Minton, captain on our flight. His first officer, Glen Hart, is the son of a former Reeve Air captain. On the cockpit loudspeaker was second officer Teresa Dodson, whose sophisticated voice suggests a Spanish accent. The daughter of the former chief pilot of Iberia, Spain's national airline, and a licensed pilot, Dodson met her future husband on a trip to Anchorage. She is now the first woman pilot in the 60-year history of Reeve Aleutian Air.

Reeve Air Electra 188

Minton, Hart and Dodson regularly take off and land in conditions that might make other pilots reach for bottles of aspirin. They believe in their airplanes, too.

One day back in the early 1980s, the plane that took us to the Pribilof Islands was several hundred miles out over the North Pacific. Without warning, one of the four propellers sheared off. A blade slammed into a second propeller, then tore through the fuselage. The shocked pilots lost all manual control, and desperately switched to autopilot. For two hours (it must have seemed like 20), the plane lurched back toward Anchorage. With live television audiences around the world holding their breath, the crippled plane landed safely.

Now there's a plane you can trust.

After three days on the remote Pribilof Islands, we arrived at the airport to hear that our return flight had been cancelled; we were stuck. A thick fog and swirling winds had rolled up from the Bering Sea, making air travel chancy. One couple was trying to get to a wedding; another had a doctor appointment in Anchorage. Tempers grew short as we learned that there were no available flights for at least the next three days. And a typhoon was bearing down within 48 hours.

But what's a little fog to an Electra? The gate agent took charge, and snapped blow-by-blow weather reports over the phone to a dispatcher 800 miles away. Could something actually reach us?

Two hours later, we got the answer. Four engines buzzed somewhere in the clouds, and we held our breath. The Electra -- silver, solid, soaring in the wind -- emerged from the fog. Feeling more than ever like expatriates in 1940s Morocco, we let out a small cheer as the tires screeched on the dirt runway.

Here's looking at you, kid.

If you'd like to ask Jack Hamann a question about his trip, send him an email at cnnjack@aol.com

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