A regional airline announced Monday a temporary fuel surcharge in response to the war in the Middle East impacting jet-fuel prices.
Beginning Friday, Alaska Seaplanes and Island Air Express will add a 6% surcharge to customer fares. That surcharge will not apply to freight customers.
Company spokesperson Andy Kline said that, to his knowledge, the company hasn’t put this type of surcharge in place before.
“The word ‘unprecedented’ keeps coming up,” he said.
He said the company gets its jet-fuel rates weekly, on Mondays, and during the first two weeks in March, those rates jumped 38%.
“Just today it went up an additional 4 percent,” he said. “That’s over 40 percent for the first two weeks of March.”
Currently, a one-way flight from Haines can be purchased online for $179, meaning the surcharge will add nearly $10.80 to the overall cost of the flight.
Kline said the company is not trying to make a profit off of higher fuel prices, but wants to avoid taking a loss.
Airlines outside of the U.S. have been raising prices for several days. Air New Zealand was among the first, announcing March 10 that its ticket prices would go up. Cathay Pacific Airways in Hong Kong announced an increase in fuel surcharges to go into place March 18. That airline cited a doubling of jet fuel prices since the beginning of the month. Scandinavian Airlines also put a temporary price increase into place March 10.
Elsewhere in Haines, customers are feeling higher fuel prices at the pump. Haynes Tormey, owner of Haines Industrial which operates a gas station, an auto parts store and industrial supply and equipment rental business, has seen diesel fuel prices rise a dollar a gallon.
“Two weeks from now our seasonal sales tax kicks in and I’ve got to raise my price again,” he said. “It’s going to be just shy of $6.50 a gallon.”
Tormey said when fuel prices go up, it depresses a broad spectrum of economic activity.
“People are less likely to hire dump trucks or go out on their fishing boats,” he said. “My dump trucks take 100 gallons on a hard day of trucking. That’s $650 a day. Nobody is going to hire me when you’re spending that much.”
Meanwhile, the Alaska Department of Revenue issued a forecast Friday that predicted the war in Iran is going to cause higher oil prices for most of 2026 and that the state would likely net hundreds of millions more in oil revenue than it had previously expected.
But while the state’s budget is easier to balance at that level, the local tourism economy could suffer. Tormey speculated that sustained higher prices could cause fewer people to drive to the Chilkat Valley this year.
Tourism director Rebecca Hylton said she has been following conversations on social media from RV travelers planning trips to Alaska.
“A very small percentage of people are saying they won’t travel,” she wrote in a message on Wednesday. “Most are saying it’s a dream trip and life is too short [not to go]. I think it will influence their spending while they are here, but not necessarily travel itself.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with more information. Seaplanes’ Andy Kline’s last name was also corrected.