ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Volunteers across the country gathered Dec. 14 to lay wreaths on the graves of those who served.

The annual Wreaths Across America Day was celebrated by military members in Alaska and the volunteers who joined them at the Fort Richardson National Cemetery on JBER Saturday.

After remarks and color presentation, six wreaths were placed by active-duty members and family members of fallen servicemembers, otherwise known as Gold Star Survivors. The six wreaths placed honored each branch of military service.

Terry Michalski, one of the location coordinators and Coast Guard Veteran himself, said placing wreaths around the holidays prevents the fallen from being forgotten.

After seven years of volunteering for the event, Michalski believes this year was one of the best.

“I have to admit, I started to tear up when -and I knew I was going to – when we had the two Gold Star children. And that’s tough,” Michalski said after the ceremony, where two separate children who lost a family member who served presented wreaths to recognize the fallen.

“As far as ceremony goes, my favorite so far,” he said. “To have the kids there and I think there were a lot of eyes that weren’t very dry when that happened.”

Snow fell as the crowd dispersed to lay the wreaths on graves. “Whatever warm holiday tradition they might have celebrated, and you might celebrate, share that with them,” Col. Lisa Mabbutt encouraged volunteers to symbolically share their holiday joy with the fallen they recognized.

According to the Wreaths Across America website there were 4,151 wreaths donated by sponsors, covering more than half of the 7,000 graves at Fort Richardson Cemetery.

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All indicators point toward a robust tourist season for next summer.

There’s a new entrant on the scene to take travelers south: Hawaiian Airlines.

Starting June 12, 2025, Hawaiian Airlines will offer twice-daily wide-body service between Anchorage and Seattle. One flight leaves at 4:10 p.m. and the other leaves at 2:55 a.m. (yawn).

On Hawaiian’s twin-aisle wide-body A330 aircraft, there are 18 lie-flat seat in first class. These are the first lie-flat seats offered between Anchorage and Seattle. Sure, it’s just a three-hour flight. But, hey, it’s 3 a.m.! There’s enough time for a cat-nap, if you’re willing to pay for it.

I checked some midsummer dates (June 18) and found the first-class seats available for $540 one-way, or 40,000 Alaska Airlines miles. Of course, those prices can go up or down in the blink of an eye.

These summertime seats are available using cash or miles on both websites: alaskaair.com or hawaiianairlines.com.

Alaska Air’s frequent flyers already are asking about elite-level upgrades on Hawaiian flights between Anchorage and Seattle and between Seattle and Tokyo.

Right now, travelers who earn miles on Hawaiian flights can transfer them to their Alaska Airlines mileage account.

According to Alex DaSilva of Hawaiian Airlines, the carrier’s A330s also feature 68 extra-legroom seats (with 36-inch pitch), plus 192 seats in the back.

With 278 seats, the A330 will be the biggest bird in the sky between Anchorage and Seattle.

But there’s another more personal reason to love the A330. Unlike Boeing’s 737s or 787s, or Airbus’ A320 family, Hawaiian’s A330 features a 2x4x2 layout. That means you can avoid the middle seat if you choose wisely.

Nobody likes a middle seat. So even though the A330 is big, about half the passengers on the plane can avoid the dreaded middle seat. Pity the poor folks in the middle section with four-across seating.

The no-middle-seat option also is available on Alaska’s E-175s that fly between Anchorage around the state, as well as on select flights south to Seattle and Portland. The planes, operated by Horizon Air (a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines), feature a 2×2 layout in coach. Sadly, Alaska dropped the Anchorage-Paine Field flight for the summer.

Delta Air Lines flies the Airbus A220 model between Anchorage and Seattle and between Fairbanks and Seattle. Those planes offer a 2×3 seating plan in coach, so there are options to avoid the middle seat.

Hawaiian’s entry into the Anchorage-Seattle market is part of a larger initiative to bring the carrier’s planes to Seattle for flights to Tokyo. Those flights start on May 20, 2025. Nonstop Seattle-Seoul flights on Hawaiian are planned for October of next year.

Hawaiian Airlines is not the only carrier beefing up its flights for next summer.

Condor Airlines, which operates a larger version of the A330 (A330-300), is boosting its summertime flight schedule from three to four times per week. The first flight is May 17, 2025.

Condor is an earn-and-burn mileage partner with Alaska Airlines.

WestJet, a Canadian airline based in Edmonton, Alberta, is launching twice-weekly flights (Fridays and Sundays) between Anchorage and Calgary starting June 29.

Delta Air Lines is boosting its nonstop Anchorage-Detroit flight to daily service for the summer, starting May 23.

In addition to its year-round Anchorage-Minneapolis nonstops, Delta will offer summertime nonstops to Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

United Airlines flies year-round nonstops to Denver. But in the summer, it will resume daily nonstops to Washington, D.C., and to Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and Newark.

American Airlines will resume its Anchorage-Dallas nonstop in March. Its Anchorage-Chicago nonstop resumes on May 5. American Air is a key mileage partner with Alaska Airlines.

Air Canada will resume its summertime flights to Vancouver, B.C., in May. Sun Country Airlines resumes its Anchorage-Minneapolis flights on May 17. Discover Airlines will resume twice-weekly nonstop service from Anchorage to Frankfurt in June.

Alaska Airlines has more nonstops from Anchorage to the Lower 49 than all the rest of the airlines combined. Nonstop destinations, in addition to Seattle and Portland, include San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego (Saturdays only), Salt Lake City, Denver, Las Vegas (Fridays and Sundays), Phoenix, Minneapolis, Honolulu, Chicago and New York’s JFK airport.

Alaska’s nonstops from Anchorage to Maui and Kona end in March.

From Fairbanks, nonstop flights are available on Delta and Alaska to Seattle. During the summer, United Airlines will offer nonstops to Chicago and Denver. Delta will fly nonstop from Fairbanks to Salt Lake City and Minneapolis.

Frequent travelers know nonstop flights are the best. They also know that middle seats are terrible. The new options for 2025 offer some good news on both fronts.

Alaska is a land of unmatched potential and opportunity. It always has been, and it always will be if we choose the right policies and priorities.

This past week, I fulfilled my constitutional and statutory duties to introduce a budget for the 2026 fiscal year that will begin next July 1. The budget follows the law by fully funding education and the Permanent Fund dividend and provides funding to address the top priorities of my administration: public safety, energy and resource development, food security, and increased affordability for the necessities of life including housing and child care.

Alaska’s existence as a state is based on our enormous resource potential. We don’t have to tax each other or pit the PFD against other state needs if we’re pursuing every opportunity that’s available. Whether it is the AKLNG Project, the North Slope, timber, critical minerals, emerging energy technologies, and new markets to monetize carbon through sequestration and natural offsets — Alaska has it all. We have everything we need, and everything the world needs.

There is tremendous opportunity for Alaskans to be realized by unlocking our trillions of cubic feet of natural gas on the North Slope, especially as our Railbelt utilities face a shortage of supply from Cook Inlet. This budget includes the funds necessary to move to the next step in the process to meet the energy needs of Alaskans and the energy demands of the world.

Energy demand is skyrocketing through the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and supercomputing, and, like so many natural resources, Alaska has everything the world needs from copper for transmission lines to rare earths for computer chips, and the ability to power it all.

President-elect Donald Trump is ready to pick up where he left off, and if we combine the right state policies with a federal administration that understands what Alaska needs, we can be a state like no other that’s the envy of the nation, and the world.

To realize our destiny as a state like no other, Alaska must be a safe place for everyone no matter who they are or where they live, where every family can afford to live, and where every parent can be sure that their child is getting the best education possible.

The budget I’ve introduced continues to build on the progress we’ve made since 2019 when we repealed catch-and-release policies and began to rebuild our ranks of Alaska State Troopers and Village Public Safety Officers.

According to the most recent reports, over the past five years, our overall crime rate has declined by 31%; violent crime dropped 5% in 2023 and is down 16% in the last five years to the lowest level since 2015; and sexual assault has declined by 20.2% since 2019 and by 15.5% last year alone.

Despite this progress, we still have much work to do to bring down crime rates that remain well above the national averages. I’m proposing continued investments in public safety with more trooper and VPSO positions, additional child crimes investigators for rural Alaska, and resources to improve emergency response and rescue capabilities with a new aircraft and reopening the Talkeetna Trooper Post.

As has been the case for many years, we will again have a conversation on education funding. However, more money alone is not the answer. Legislation is forthcoming that will address both funding and measures aimed at improving outcomes.

This is not an either-or proposition, and we can’t be captured by any special interest that demands money without accountability for outcomes.

We can respond to concerns over education funding as we build on the early successes under the implementation of the Alaska READS Act and the research that shows our charter schools are the best performing in the nation. We must ensure that additional resources benefit classroom instruction and that parents, who are the best suited to determine how their children are educated, have those choices.

I believe in the Alaska Dream; I believe in Alaska’s potential to achieve its dreams. I’m ready to work with anyone and everyone to enact the policies required to achieve it.

Mike Dunleavy is the 12th governor of Alaska.

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