Regional

Scheduled air service to Cold Bay is being cancelled through Dec. 1. That's expected to also disrupt service to Unalaska, where the only commercial flight option requires a connection in the Alaska Peninsula village.

This is the first closure of this kind during the pandemic at any State of Alaska airport, according to Sam Dapcevich, a public information officer with the Alaska Department of Transportation.

A rebooted version of Ravn airlines will resume scheduled flights to Unalaska and several other Alaska communities in less than a week. Ravn Alaska CEO Rob McKinney says federal authorities granted approvals last Friday.

On the remote Pribilof Island of St. Paul, the school year started off with roughly 25 percent of students doing home-based education, despite the fact that the school was open to students.

As the year has progressed, most of those students have returned. But like in many remote areas in Alaska, St. Paul remains on high alert because the effects of returning to distance-based education in the small community of just 397 people could be particularly devastating.

Ravn Alaska will return to six Alaska communities on Friday, with regularly scheduled public chartered flights offered by Ravn Travel. 

Tickets are now available for scheduled flights between Anchorage and Unalaska, Sand Point, Homer, Kenai and Valdez, according to Ravn CEO Rob McKinney. 

A $9 million settlement will be paid to survivors and families of those lost at sea last New Year's Eve after a Dutch Harbor fishing vessel sank off the Alaska Peninsula. 

The company that owned the fishing vessel Scandies Rose will pay out from its insurance policy to the families of four deceased fishermen and two survivors that worked on the 130-foot crab boat.