Alaska Airlines – a Corporate Partner of the FTE Digital, Innovation & Startup Hub – and Hawaiian Airlines have launched a single, unified Alaska Hawaiian mobile app. Built to support travel across both airlines, the new app brings everything travellers need into one streamlined experience – from booking and check-in to day-of travel updates – with improved performance and expanded features, particularly for legacy Hawaiian Airlines app users. This app redesign also represents an important step in bringing the two airlines closer together, while preserving their distinct identities and experiences.

The new Alaska Hawaiian app is designed around one goal: making travel easier. Instead of switching between apps or navigating different experiences, travellers will be able to manage their entire journey in one place – whether flying Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines or connecting across both.

As part of the transition to one mobile platform, the current Alaska Airlines app will update automatically for most travellers, while the legacy Hawaiian Airlines app will remain available through 21 April 2026.

While the platform is unified, the experience is still personal. Travellers can choose between an Alaska Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines-themed experience, aligning the look and feel with the airline they fly most.

“Guests get a single, seamless app experience – while still seeing the airline they know and trust – making it easier to book, manage and travel with confidence,” said Natalie Bowman, Vice President of Digital Experience, Alaska Airlines.

The unified app is a key milestone in Alaska and Hawaiian’s ongoing investments to deliver a seamless experience across their combined global network. Today, travellers benefit from shared lobby spaces, reduced lobby lines with modern bag-tag stations and a comprehensive loyalty programme.

The aim by bringing both airlines into one app and the same passenger service system on 22 April is that travellers will enjoy simplified trip management and self-service features across Alaska and Hawaiian, and consistent performance improvements to technology.

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — For years, a popular part of many cruises in southeast Alaska has been sailing up Tracy Arm, a long, narrow fjord marked by steep mountains, glittering waterfalls and calving glaciers.

But this season, major cruise lines are skipping it. A massive landslide last summer sent parts of a glacier crashing into the water, generated a tsunami and pushed a wave high up the opposite mountain wall. Several companies opting out cited safety concerns with the still-hazardous slopes.

“Tracy Arm is the majestic princess, you know, she is the queen of fjords,” said travel agent Nate Vallier.

The destination cruise and tour companies have chosen as an alternative — nearby Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier — is “still beautiful by any means, but it’s just not the same,” he said.

Tracy Arm, southeast of Juneau, is a roughly 30-mile (50-kilometer) fjord that features two tidewater glaciers — the North and South Sawyer — and wildlife, including seals and bears.

Early on Aug. 10, 2025, a landslide originating high on a slope above the toe of the South Sawyer, near the head of the fjord, sent water surging more than a quarter mile (more than half a kilometer) up the mountain wall opposite the slide and out Tracy Arm.

No ships were in the fjord, officials said, and no deaths or injuries were reported. But kayakers camped on an island near where Tracy and Endicott arms meet had much of their gear swept away by the rushing water.

Southeast Alaska, largely encompassed by a temperate rainforest, is no stranger to landslides. And while it’s long been known the fjord network in the Tracy Arm region has been susceptible, the slope that failed had not been identified as an active hazard before last summer’s collapse, said Gabriel Wolken, manager of the state’s climate and ice hazards program.

Scientists are working to understand not only what caused the slope to collapse but to understand what other hazards might exist in the fjord, he said.

The area remains unstable, said Steven Sobieszczyk, a U.S. Geological Survey spokesperson. Steep landslide areas continue to change for years after an initial slide, he said by email.

“Continued rockfall and small-scale sliding from the exposed landslide scar are expected and could impact the water, potentially causing a future localized tsunami,” he said.

Major cruise companies, including Holland America, Carnival Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean said in response to inquiries from The Associated Press that they are replacing a Tracy Arm visit with Endicott Arm. MSC Cruises, Virgin Voyages and regional tour company Allen Marine also are doing Endicott and Dawes Glacier instead. Norwegian Cruise Line said it does not have voyages sailing by Tracy Arm.

Endicott already has been a stop for some ships previously and an alternative when conditions in Tracy Arm, such as excess ice, have been unsafe.

Vallier, who owns the Alaska Travel Desk, said he would have liked cruise companies to give travelers more advance notice about itinerary changes.

After leaving Seattle, the first ships of the season are due April 21 in Ketchikan and in Juneau the following week.

Seeing a glacier — particularly a dynamic, calving glacier — is a bucket-list item for many tourists, and that’s what has made Tracy Arm so popular, he said. While the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau is a major attraction for the capital city and cruise port, many visitors view it from across a large lake, and it has diminished or entirely retreated from view from some hiking overlooks.

Kimberly Lebeda of Wichita, Kansas, was excited when she booked tickets for a Tracy Arm excursion for her family last year. Lebeda, who researches areas she visits, said she was sold on the scenery.

But the night before the stop, they were told that due to ice in Tracy Arm, they would go up Endicott instead. Her family and others who’d booked the excursion got off the ship and onto a smaller boat with glass windows, abundant seating and snacks. They saw seals on ice floes, waterfalls and “a wall of ice” calve from Dawes Glacier, she said.

She called it “an amazing thing to witness.”

“Was it worth it? Yes, because I don’t know if I’ll ever get to do that trip again,” she said. “Again, I haven’t ever been to Tracy Arm so I can’t really compare. But to me, was it worth it and was it exciting? Absolutely.”

In a state with some of the highest rates of sexual abuse in the nation, why are Alaska’s lawmakers so slow to act on a bill aimed at protecting minors?

House Bill 101 unanimously passed the House last session but has since languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it’s been shielded from any action. The reason for that? Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Matt Claman, an Anchorage Democrat who is running for governor, wants to use the bill as an anchor for an omnibus crime package that’s yet to be unveiled. The bill’s sponsor, Anchorage Rep. Andrew Gray, also a Democrat, wants to keep HB 101 a standalone item, arguing it has a better chance of becoming law on its own rather than being watered down in an omnibus package with who-knows-what legislation yet to be attached — and he’s right.

The crux of the bill itself is simple: Raise the age of consent from 16 to 18. It’s a no-brainer of a bill, and it should be passed on its own rather than be cobbled into an omnibus behemoth.

Omnibus bills have a track record of becoming legislative junk drawers — catch-all packages that often include legislators’ pet projects, broadly sweeping proposals or last-minute amendments that can sink legislation. What starts as a clear bill can quickly derail into a diluted version of itself, which benefits no one at the end of the day. It’s exactly for those reasons that some lawmakers — in this case Sen. Claman — build omnibus bills in the first place, and it’s bad governance.

That offense is especially acute here. House Bill 101 didn’t just pass the House — it passed unanimously. That’s a rare feat in this age of partisan gridlock. Ensconcing it in a multi-layered package is pure politics, an attempt to create a prop on which to hang a gubernatorial campaign.

Rep. Gray has been correctly explicit about the danger. The more pieces you weld onto a bill, the more chances you create for opposition to form. A measure that could pass 20-0 in the Senate on its own today suddenly becomes vulnerable when tied to unrelated policies slated for tomorrow. And it’s not just that an omnibus package is harder to pass — the building of these mega-bills is expressly undemocratic. Voters and lawmakers should be able to clearly support initiatives that rise or fall on their own merits. When multiple laws are packaged together, lawmakers are forced to accept or deny the whole package rather than each individual proposal. This subverts a full debate and leads to broadly unpopular laws being passed against voters’ wishes.

There also is a time factor at play. With the legislative session rolling fast toward a scheduled May 20 close, pushing forth a yet-to-be-seen omnibus package is like hitting the emergency brake as the train pulls into the station. In a Legislature where time is short and priorities compete for attention, an omnibus rollout is a risk lawmakers should hesitate to embrace.

Alaska consistently ranks at or near the top in the nation for sexual assault and abuse. More than half of reported sex offenses in Alaska involve crimes against children. The current law leaves a gap that predators can and do exploit. At 16, a teenager in Alaska can legally consent to sex with someone of any age. That means when a 16- or 17-year-old is targeted by a much older adult, the burden often falls on the teen to prove in court that the encounter was not consensual — a high bar that can complicate prosecutions and discourage reporting.

House Bill 101 aims to fix that by shifting the legal framework in a way that better protects minors and gives law enforcement clearer tools. It puts the responsibility where it belongs — on the adult, not the child. Teens ages 13 to 15 could still legally engage with someone up to four years older, and 16- and 17-year-olds with someone up to six years older. The goal is not to police teenage relationships but to draw a clearer, more defensible line when adults prey on minors.

Lawmakers can and should vet this and all bills thoroughly, including fiscal impacts and how the law would be enforced. But those debates belong in the open, on the record, with amendments if needed and votes taken accordingly. They are not a justification for keeping the bill parked in committee or folding it into a broader package that hasn’t even been introduced.

Alaskans deserve to know where their senators stand on this issue. Families, educators and advocates want clarity on whether lawmakers are willing to strengthen protections for minors. And despite Sen. Claman’s grandstanding, victims — past and future — deserve a system that doesn’t make accountability harder than it needs to be.

There is a simple path forward. Move House Bill 101 out of committee as a standalone bill, bring it to the floor and take the vote.