t’s not as easy as you might think to start a global airline,” says Rob McKinney.

Not that the CEO of Northern Pacific Airways is complaining. Progress has been swift in the nearly two years since the upstart airline was a glimmer in his eye, and not yet three years have elapsed since McKinney’s California commuter carrier bought Ravn Alaska at a bankruptcy auction.

While reviving Ravn’s routes to rural Alaska communities, McKinney has been busy acquiring a fleet of jets to connect Japan and China with the Lower 48, using Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) as a hub. Each 757, retired after service with American Airlines, cost about $10 million, and Northern Pacific bought four by the end of 2022 with eight more on order.

For somewhat less than the cost of an airliner, Northern Pacific invested in another start-up cost: refurbishing part of ANC’s North Terminal to welcome international passengers.

Across from Gate N5, glass doors automatically slide apart at the entrance to the Navigators Club, a lounge reserved for first-class flyers. A wall-sized abacus hangs above the bar, and wood paneling and black countertops suggest a sophisticated atmosphere.

The adjoining mini-theater is meant for all classes flying on Northern Pacific. Fifty chairs face a floor-to-ceiling movie screen in a space little larger than a conference room. The minimalist chairs have ultra-thin seats that fold completely into the rectangular backs. The airline intends to show a movie with scenes of other Alaska destinations.

The idea came from IcelandAir, which promotes tourism in its home country for trans-Atlantic travelers. “For all these connecting people who are making a tight connection, we want them to see, ‘This is what you missed because you didn’t stay here.’ And next time they come through, they’ll book a couple extra days,” McKinney explains.

Northern Pacific plans to use all the gates in the terminal for its flights, including the international side for passengers screened by US Customs and Border Protection. Currently, travel between Alaska and Asia must pass through Seattle or other West Coast airports to clear customs.

Altogether, the $6 million refurbishment covers 20,000 square feet of leased space, including a crew area and ticket counter.

“We’re proud to say that Alaska’s North Terminal now looks the best it ever has,” McKinney says. “Visitors will be inspired to stay and explore Alaska, and Alaskans will have easier access to international travel than ever before.”

These days, the North Terminal is quiet but not completely empty. In the last year, more than 14,000 travelers passed through, according to the airport’s communications coordinator, Megan Peters. That’s down from approximately 25,000 pre-pandemic in 2019—barely a planeload per day, year round, and vastly smaller than the 4 million passengers using ANC’s South Terminal annually.

When Northern Pacific’s first jet visited ANC in October, the decor at the North Terminal gate was frozen in time since the late ‘80s.

Alaska Business

Installing the bar in the Navigators Club.

Cornerstone General Contractors

“Anchorage used to bustle as an international hub with travelers connecting from Asia, Russia, and the Lower 48 alike,” McKinney says. The North Terminal was built in the ‘80s when Anchorage was the Air Crossroads of the World for flights avoiding the USSR’s Siberian air corridor. International flights from ANC disappeared after the fall of the Soviet Union, leaving the terminal mostly idle except for seasonal flights to Frankfurt, Germany or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia.

In the off-season, the lights are kept on for cargo crews that move through the North Terminal. The fixtures remain much as they were in the early ‘90s, such as the black leather seats slung from tubular frames at each of the gate areas. Vacant concession kiosks still display ‘90s-vintage signs. The lobby is the same as ever. Maroon carpet has been scuffed and torn over the last thirty years.

Updating the whole building from what McKinney calls “the Reagan administration era” is beyond his company’s reach. “There’s no way we could take over an entire terminal,” he says. “I think there’s probably a little too much taxidermy in there, and obviously the carpets really, really need to be redone.”

Making a clean spot in Northern Pacific’s leased area lit a fire under the state-owned airport to tidy up the common spaces.

“The North Terminal needed some renovations and some improvements since ’83, so it’s about time,” says Todd Petrie of Cornerstone General Contractors. “It also kicked off a couple other state projects that they’re working on, as well as circulation finishes and the ticketing gate counter, so it’s definitely helping move things forward.”

Petrie, who previously oversaw Concourse C construction in the South Terminal, was project manager for the Northern Pacific Airways renovation. But he couldn’t begin until the project had a design, which had its roots in New York City.

One of his first steps toward launching the airline had McKinney contact Forward Media for a branding package. “Edmond Huot [chief creative officer] came up with the name, came up with the livery design and pretty much the whole theme of northern lights, the colors and patterns that carry all the way through our branding,” he recalls.

The branding is one snag that’s keeping the airline grounded, unfortunately. BNSF Railway is suing for trademark infringement. The railroad owns the former Northern Pacific Railway, which was absorbed by the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1970. BNSF claims that it still uses the Northern Pacific name in its branding, which should prevent the airline from registering the name as its own trademark.

McKinney is optimistic that the trademark suit will work out in his favor. “That’s just gonna be a wrinkle in the road,” he says. “They have not used that trademark in fifty years commercially. They can still obviously sell their pillows and T-shirts and all this kind of stuff, and what we do is nothing like a railroad does.”

He’s seeking adjudication in the US Patent and Trademark Office, while the railroad prefers hashing it out in state court in Texas. “I’ve reached out to [BNSF owner] Warren Buffet specifically to see if there’s some amicable way to work this out,” McKinney says.

The railroad certainly has no trademark on the airline’s black-and-silver aurora borealis imagery, which informs the interior decoration. Cara Rude of MCG Explore Design translated McKinney’s wishes and Huot’s branding into a plan for the construction contractor to follow. Her biography on the company website notes that her father was a carpenter, and “the smell of sawdust brings back the excitement she felt watching as a child.”

Testing the slim seats in Northern Pacific’s Experience Theater, an idea CEO Rob McKinney borrowed from IcelandAir to show travelers what they miss by not booking more time in Alaska.

Cornerstone General Contractors

With a design in hand, Cornerstone started preconstruction services in the fall of 2021. Petrie credits MCG Explore Design for a smooth process. “We were able to work collaboratively up front and everything,” he says. “Worked the way it was designed to be.”

The renovation covered 4,600 square feet of lounge space, plus Northern Pacific’s fleet and ground operations area, ticketing and baggage claim, maintenance and offices, and a backstage area for flight crews.

Rude’s design called for innovative techniques and materials, such as a transparent felt ceiling in the lounge to dampen sound.

“A lot of the products are low VOC [volatile organic compounds],” Petrie says. “The architect likes to have environmentally friendly type components and products in there. The flooring in particular was a special flooring, Chilewich flooring, that definitely has some recycled content.”

Another component of the ceiling treatment is a drapery made by Cascade Coil, which specializes in wire fabrics. The effect is a gold pattern decorating the lounge’s bar. Petrie notes that the product ordinarily is hung vertically. “Took about four duct jacks and five guys to put that up in the ceiling there,” he says, “so it’s a rather interesting and unique system to put in. We had a key guy to help trim it to the right length at the bottom and make sure everything was fit perfectly there.”

Putting up the heavy drape wasn’t the hardest part of the job. What gave Cornerstone the most trouble, Petrie recalls, was demolishing the old security coils, or mesh curtains that barricade vendor spaces during off hours. “From basically the gate area to the tenant improvement space, there used to be security coils there that were put back in 1983,” he says. “It was unique that we had the guy that installed those back in that time period help us remove those from the building and get them out of there, so it’s kind of a special thing.”

MCG Explore Design and Cornerstone General Contractors created a deluxe hangout for travelers halfway through their trips between East Asia and the Lower 48.

Alaska Business

For his efforts, Petrie and Cornerstone were recognized by the Associated General Contractors of Alaska with the 2022 Excellence in Construction award for vertical construction between $5 million and $15 million. It’s an honor that Cornerstone General Contractors is used to, being awarded every year going back decades.

Most crucially, the job earned praise from the client. “My hat’s off to both MCG, the architects, and Cornerstone, the contractors,” says McKinney. “They both really knocked this out of the park, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the result.”

The finished renovation is ready for use as soon as the airline can take off. Cornerstone’s marketing manager, Pearl-Grace Pantaleone, says the project “breathes new life” into the North Terminal, where work continues in early 2023 in the common areas.

“The state is spending some money to improve the circulation areas,” Petrie says. “It’ll be some new refurbishments along the way—not completely, but just some nice touches that’ll help with the flow of traffic in the Northern Pacific Airways spaces.”

Peters, the ANC spokeswoman, says the faded old carpet is being replaced through May in high traffic areas.

As foot traffic ramps up, McKinney is counting on other amenities to set up shop to serve his passengers. “There’s gonna be vendors back in the North Terminal as well, so it won’t just be our lounge facility,” he says.

Passengers can’t book tickets yet on Northern Pacific Airways, but the airline is getting ready for business. In October, one of its jets circumnavigated its namesake body of water on a “show and tell tour.” Boeing 757-200 628NP took off from Ontario, California (the airline’s maintenance base inland from Los Angeles) and stopped in Maui, Hawaii and then Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands before landing at ANC and greeting visitors at Gate N5.

McKinney originally hoped to be carrying paying customers shortly afterward, but that was before Russian airspace became a no-go. For a while, the airline explored destinations in Mexico as its first connections from Anchorage, but that ran into technical snags while the Asia-Pacific market opened back up.

For now, McKinney says, “It looks like that is most likely to be our first routes: Saipan to Australia and the Philippines. We’re still working out some of the regulatory hurdles to fly with a partner around Russia to get to Korea and Japan.”

When that 757 emblazoned with the “N” monogram returns to Anchorage for real, Petrie hopes to be back inside the terminal. “Someday in the near future, yes,” he says without hesitation. “I’d like to be on one of the first routes heading out of here, really. See what it looks like to experience Northern Pacific Airways.”

And McKinney, for his part, is grateful for his experience with Cornerstone. “More than what I even expected,” the CEO says. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful space that we have now.”