Drinking bad coffee is just one of the many downsides of flying. Alaska Airlines thinks it has a solution.
Alaska has created a custom blend with Portland-based roaster Stumptown to make a coffee that’s immune from the altitude-changing effects that airborne-served coffee typically creates, including tasting bitter and weak.
The custom coffee, a first for a major airline, will exclusively be served on every Alaska flight, including its regional carrier Horizon Air, by December 1.
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Taste and smell are inextricably combined and people’s sense of smell is significantly altered in the sky. Food and drinks taste different because pressurized cabins lower blood oxygen levels, which reduces the ability of olfactory receptors (i.e. the ability to smell). The extremely dry air of the cabin, with its humidity levels lower than that of the Sahara Desert, also affects the nose.
To combat those effects, Alaska turned to Stumptown’s Holler Mountain, a medium-dark blend, for the base, then infused it with punchier notes that taste like marshmallows, browned butter and toffee as well as a “delicate hint” of citrus oils and cherry essence. As a result, the coffee’s notes have a more “complex” taste when consumed in the air.
The coffee has been in development for a year, with the airline telling CNN that 20 different versions were tested, including during flights and with blind surveys. Alaska even taste-tested the blend with creamer and Biscoff cookies to “ensure the best combination.”
However, the freshly brewed partnership with Stumptown means that Alaska is ending its decade-long partnership with fellow Seattle-based coffee company, Starbucks. Alaska said it is “grateful to our friends at Starbucks and proud to have served their coffee on board our flights for years.” (Delta Air Lines, which has a major hub in Seattle, still serves Starbucks on its flights).
“Airplane coffee is often a joke for many travelers,” Edward Russell, editor of the Airline Weekly newsletter for travel industry publication Skift, told CNN. “That’s why airlines often try to up their game with various global coffee brands; despite that, most onboard options are mediocre.”
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He added that he doubts the custom coffee will attract new customers to the airline, but the new partnership with Stumptown “looks more like what the airline does best,” which is boost businesses from the Pacific Northwest. Other regional companies served on Alaska include Tillamook cheeses, Salt & Straw ice cream and Straightaway canned cocktails.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Cheyenne Taylor turned 24 years old, and on Sunday, the only gift she wanted was for her sister’s body to be found.
“We need that closure so bad,” she said in an interview from her home in Tennessee.
Hawaiian authorities suspended the multi-day search for 32-year-old Lauren Cameron of Anchorage over the weekend, three days after she went missing in the waters off the north shore of Kaua’i.
Cameron was vacationing on the island of Kaua’i with her boyfriend, Anchorage resident Torin Blaker. The pair were hiking the Na Pali coast on Wednesday, Dec. 11, and had stopped at Hanakāpī‘ai Beach.
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According to a release from the Kaua’i Fire Department, rescuers responded to the area shortly after 3 p.m. on reports that Cameron had entered the water and was swept into the ocean by strong currents.
Taylor said authorities in Kaua’i — including the fire department and the Coast Guard — have been very communicative about the search, making sure friends and family members had the latest information.
She also heard from a man who said he and his wife were hiking in the area when they saw Cameron that day. Taylor said her sister was a good swimmer but knew better than to swim in dangerous waters and was only rinsing off after the hike. The man told her Cameron was in water no deeper than her ankles when he saw her.
“He said that she was just washing off, and he said he and his wife went on to walk a little bit more and they started hearing screaming for help because that’s when the wave came in and took Lauren,” Taylor said.
Taylor is also grateful for another man she hasn’t spoken to who swam out in the choppy water to try and save Cameron by delivering some sort of floatation device.
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What happened next is unclear, but Taylor said her sister wasn’t able to hang on.
“I just want to thank him, I do, he risked his own life for my sister’s life and it means a lot to us,” she said.
Taylor described her sister as adventurous, loving, and kind to all, a sentiment echoed by her long-time boyfriend, Torin Blaker.
Blaker wrote that he is devastated by the loss, and said in a tribute written to Cameron that “she loved life.”
“She loved its challenges, for a challenge equals a solution to which she could find,” the statement read. “She loved adventure, for around every bend was something new. She loved love, for it is the binding that makes us human.“
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Lauren Cameron with boyfriend Torin Blaker(Torin Blaker)
Blaker thanked first responders in Hawaii as well as the support from the Alaska Division of Forestry where he works and the Anchorage Health Department where Cameron was employed.
Blaker’s full tribute to Lauren:
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Alaskans are all too familiar with radical groups funded by out-of-state interests seeking to shut down sustainable resource development. A predictable cast of characters — including billionaire activists and extreme environmental groups — are now working to destroy a large segment of the Alaska seafood industry. This campaign to ban trawling — a sustainable fishing method responsible for a substantial majority of fishery landings in the Alaska Region and nationally —poses a direct threat to Alaska’s coastal economy, seafood sector and way of life.
If you enjoy wild seafood — fish sandwiches or shrimp; fish sticks or scallops; fish tacos or rockfish — you are enjoying seafood caught by “trawl” or “dredge” fishing gears that touch the seafloor. It’s true that these fishing methods, like every farm, aquaculture facility and fishing operation on the planet, impact the environment. But, what’s also true is that the impacts of trawl fishing in Alaska are continually monitored to ensure long-term ecosystem health.
Few food production methods anywhere in the world are more sustainable and well-regulated than fisheries in the Alaska region, a fact we should all be proud of. Fishery scientists and managers use a clear, science-based process to decide where and when fishing can happen and how many fish can be caught. This results in sustainable Alaska fisheries — fisheries that support tens of thousands of jobs and many coastal communities — producing billions of seafood meals every year to feed people in America and around the world.
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The recent commentary authored for the Alaska Beacon by Heather Sauyaq Jean Gordon and David Bayes is the latest effort to demonize sustainable trawl fisheries. Like other attacks on our sector, the commentary comes from a vocal few that play fast and loose with the facts.
First, let’s talk about bycatch. The authors’ claim that trawl fisheries have “high bycatch rates” is flat out wrong. The Alaska pollock fishery, for example, is recognized by the National Marine Fisheries Service as “one of the cleanest in terms of incidental catch of other species (less than 1 percent).” By way of contrast, the fixed-gear halibut and sablefish fisheries championed by Linda Behnken — one of the commentary’s co-signatories — have bycatch rates at least 28 times higher than the Alaska pollock fishery, with discard rates ranging from 28.5% to 48%.
We weren’t surprised to see the inaccuracies in the piece. Trawl critics constantly misrepresent bycatch data. For example, jellyfish — nearly 40% of the 1% bycatch in the pollock fishery — are deliberately grouped with other species in reported bycatch totals. In reality, less than 10% of trawl bycatch is made up of halibut, salmon and crab species, with pollock representing the largest component of total trawl bycatch.The dead halibut thrown overboard by the Gulf of Alaska IFQ halibut fishery exceeds the total halibut bycatch mortality from the entire Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet.
Let’s talk about monitoring. Alaska trawl fisheries lead the world in using independent observers and electronic monitoring to ensure full transparency. Across all Alaska Region trawl fisheries, 94% of the total catch was independently observed in 2023. Furthermore, Alaska’s pollock catcher vessels are implementing the largest Electronic Monitoring program in the United States, which will push North Pacific trawl vessel monitoring even higher, to almost 100%. Among the fleet that Linda Behnken represents, by contrast, just 23% of total 2023 harvests were observed by either electronic or human monitoring and there has been resistance to monitoring expansion.
Let’s talk about habitat. The emotive claim that trawl gear “scrapes the ocean’s bottom” implies permanent ecosystem harm. In reality, the Bering Sea floor is constantly subject to tidal and storm disturbance, and any additional impacts of trawling have consistently been found by experts to be “temporary and minimal”. Areas that have been regularly fished with trawl gear for decades remain some of the most diverse and productive fishing grounds on Earth.
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David Bayes, a charter fisherman and a co-author of the recent commentary, has regularly attacked our region’s sustainable trawl fisheries. The Facebook page he founded often features posts that wish death or harm toward our fellow captains and crew, our boats and our processing plants. Other posts spew hateful, personal and vengeful attacks against anyone who dares to speak up and correct misinformation about trawling or Alaska pollock. Alaskans deserve better than this.
In October, Mr. Bayes attended a meeting of billionaire environmental funders that showcased a clear anti-fishing agenda. Panels like “Bycatch: Building Power Around Alaska’s Newest Four-Letter Word” revealed a roadmap for shutting down Alaskan fisheries. Oceans 5, a key sponsor of the meeting, pools money from billionaire activists to fund campaigns displacing harvesters from their traditional fishing grounds. Their main goal? Establishing Marine Protected Areas that ban all fishing activity. If Bayes’s activist allies succeed in shutting down Alaska’s trawl fisheries, don’t think they’ll stop there. Other fisheries — and even sport fishing — could be next in their crosshairs.
We take pride in harvesting Alaska pollock and other groundfish, contributing to Alaska’s rich fishing heritage, coastal communities, and economy. Alaskans deserve honest discussions about fisheries, which often require complex trade-offs. As warming oceans — not trawl fleets — affect certain salmon and crab stocks, making informed decisions is extremely challenging. We welcome fair debates grounded in truth, transparency, and facts that can help sustain all Alaskan fisheries.
Sam Wright is a lifelong Alaskan born and raised in Homer. He has fished for over 30 years for crab, flatfish, Pacific cod and other species in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska.
Dan Carney is an Alaskan, homesteader, farmer, fisherman, 43-year Bering Sea survivor.
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Jason Chandler was born in Kodiak and is a lifelong resident. He has participated in multiple fisheries over more than 30 years and is now owner/operator of his family’s trawl vessel.
Kiley Thomson is a 32-year resident of Sand Point who fishes for salmon, crab, pollock and cod in the Gulf of Alaska. He is president of the Peninsula Fishermen’s Coalition and the Area M Seiners Association organizations, representing small vessels in Alaska groundfish and salmon fisheries respectively.
To the editor: I fully agree with David Helvarg’s concern that Alaska is both a climate victim and a perpetrator. But he did not mention two necessary actions for timely mitigation of climate change.
First, we need more nuclear power, the only non-warming energy source that can quickly meet the scale of our demand without undue habitat destruction.
Second, existing fossil fuel plants must scale back their operations and global-warming emissions as renewables scale up. Such renewables include California desert solar power, recently and surprisingly characterized as producing surplus energy.
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Yes, these two steps will raise the cost of power. But will we or won’t we take the necessary actions to save our only spaceship and its precious inhabitants, whether polar bears in Alaska or Joshua trees in the California desert?
J. Philip Barnes, San Pedro
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To the editor: One has to wonder just how “green” Eland or any other solar farm truly is. (“L.A.’s massive new solar farm is cheap and impressive. More, please,” column, Dec. 5)
First is the issue of habitat destruction (even if the land in question was an alfalfa field at one time). Then there’s the question of what happens to all these wonderful solar panels and batteries once they’ve passed their life span (ditto for windmill blades).
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I’m probably not alone in wishing we’d spend as much on conserving energy as creating it.
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