Flight of the Samovar

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines counts only four jets and 13 prop planes in its passenger fleet, but it has more than its share of panache. Since 1967, stewardesses have worn Gay Nineties costumes, and pilots have been required to sing some flight announcements to the tune of Calamity Jane. All that has changed. Now the "Golden Nugget" flights have become the "Golden Samovar." Stewardesses in boots and Cossack minitunics serve borsch, beef stroganoff and "Bolshoi Golden Troikas" (coffee, vodka and coffee liqueur) from gilded samovars.

In June, barring any last-minute hitches, Alaska Airlines will become the first non-Russian airline to fly tourists into Siberia. Last week Chairman Charles F. Willis Jr. received an all but final go-ahead for the flights from Intourist, the Soviet tourist agency. Washington's Civil Aeronautics Board has given its blessing for ten tourist flights next summer between Anchorage and Khabarovsk.

The tours promise something different for jaded jet-setters. For $850, which takes care of all expenses (even liquor), travelers will get a whirlwind eight-day tour of Siberia. It will include a flight with a view of the Great Wall of China, a banquet in Irkutsk, a hydrofoil trip on Lake Baikal and a visit to the Bratsk dam. For another $400, the package will stretch to 15 days. Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, will take over at Khabarovsk and fly tourists to Moscow, Samarkand and Tashkent.

The tours are a first step toward Alaska Airlines' long-sought goal of regularly scheduled flights to the Soviet Union. The airline now flies only within Alaska and between Seattle and Anchorage. On the strength of tourism and a brisk air-freight business to the North Slope oil wells, Alaska Airlines earned $554,000 on operating revenues of $36.6 million in the first eleven months of last year, compared with a loss of $4.3 million in the equivalent period of 1968. Now that it is due to become an international carrier in a small way, its hopes for future growth rest on eventually providing--with Aeroflot --scheduled trans-Siberia flights to Moscow for Pacific Coast residents.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.