McKinley Express tour through Alaska. (Photo Credit: Susan Young)

As a travel writer, I’ve cruised Alaska several times but never included the Holland America Denali Cruisetour package.

Previous experiences involved round-trip itineraries from Seattle or Vancouver. This time was different and gave me a new perspective on the amazing adventures of the land and sea itinerary.

The cruise began in Vancouver on the Nieuw Amsterdam, with stops in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway, along with sea days spent visiting Glacier Bay National Park and College Fjord. The seven-day itinerary ended in Whittier, adding a stay at the Holland America Denali Lodge. There are several versions of the land portion available. Ours was the D2C 11-Day Signature Denali, including three nights at the lodge.

Room at the Denali Lodge. (Photo Credit: Susan Young)

After seven days of cruising, we pulled into Whittier, disembarked early and boarded the McKinley Explorer to Denali. The domed coach train is located adjacent to the port, a short walk from the ship. Our cruise package included specific seats on the second level of the rail car with comfortable accommodations and 360-degree views during the eight- to nine-hour trip.

Breakfast and lunch are provided in the dining area below, and you will be free to wander the rail car with plenty of spaces and platforms to take in the views of the route north to Denali. There is a small lift available for those with mobility issues. Attendants in each car knowledgeably narrated portions of the route and offered drinks and snacks along the way.

With stops in Talkeetna and Anchorage, the train moved at a leisurely pace, sometimes reaching 60 mph, with amazing views and stories of people living off the grid in the region. We passed the humble home of Shannon Cartwright, a children’s book illustrator, who has worked without a computer for decades. Her relationship with crew on the Explorer grew as she would hop on to take her creations to Anchorage for publication and ride back to her home in the woods.

Nenana River. (Photo Credit: Susan Young)

Upon arrival at Denali, we boarded a bus for the 15-minute ride to Holland America’s Denali Lodge where we were delivered to our quarters, located on the Nenana River. The massive campus starts at the top of a hill with the Main Lodge and works its way down to the river with multiple lodgings along the way.

In the center of the campus lies Denali Square, which houses Karsten’s Public House, providing Alaskan comfort food options like beer-battered halibut, Beecher’s mac and cheese and craft brews. Ship favorites, like the Dive-In Burger, can also be found, along with an endless breakfast buffet.

The Main Lodge houses the Canyon Ridge Grill, with a menu resembling the ship’s Pinnacle Grill, including their infamous Clothesline Candied Bacon, in addition to regional favorites with a Denali spin. Cafes offer coffee choices as well as boxed lunches to take along on lengthy excursions. We were also offered the choice of having a pizza delivered to our room, for a relaxing respite on our porch overlooking the river.

Clothesline Candied Bacon at Canyon Ridge Grill. (Photo Credit: Susan Young)

Another option for an evening meal, in the Square, is The Music of Denali Dinner Theater at the Golden Nugget Saloon. Learn about Alaska history while enjoying the talents of singers belting out original musical comedy while dining on Alaskan salmon, smokehouse barbecue and all the fixings. Dinner is served family-style and there is plenty of it.

Throughout the lodge campus, we found shuttle stops, offering ride options to any point on the property. There are also several foot trails meandering along the river and up to the Main Lodge. The Denali National Park Visitors’ Center is only a mile from the lodge which offers complimentary shuttle service to and from the Center. There is also a mile-long hiking trail to the Center from the Main Lodge.

Beyond Mile 15, Denali National Park does not allow personal vehicles, only private outfitters and approved tour buses. The Tundra Wilderness Tour is a five- to six-hour narrated bus tour of the park (and not to be missed), up to Mile 43 and back. Currently, the road is closed past this point, due to an ongoing landslide blocking the only route available through the park.

View from McKinley Express. (Photo Credit: Susan Young)

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Sightings of Mount Denali are few as the mountain peaks are often shrouded in clouds. Our driver-naturalist spotted an opening and stopped so we all could observe the tallest, most majestic mountain in North America. He also stopped the bus when sighting Dall sheep on the hillside, or the caribou and ever-elusive moose.

Numerous excursions for all ages are available, which makes this trip the perfect multi-generational vacation destination. Everything from zip-lining, fly-fishing and mountainside golfing to ATV adventures and even an Arctic Circle flight experience. The opportunity for quiet hikes along the Nenana River or loving on musher puppies at the Main Lodge are also options.

Musher puppies with the author. (Photo Credit: Susan Young)

After three nights at the Lodge, we were transported, by bus, to Anchorage. The six-hour trip, in a comfortable motorcoach, was also occasionally narrated. Taking us through Wasilla, we stopped at Settlers Bay Lodge for a buffet sandwich lunch and a chance to stretch our legs.

At the end of our journey, we were dropped off at the Hilton Anchorage for an overnight stay before catching our flight. To top off the trip, we took advantage of the extended daylight hours and hopped on the Anchorage Trolley Tours for an educational evening ride through the city. Listening to stories about the devastating 1964 earthquake, and the culture of the region, opened our eyes to the history of Alaska’s largest city.

The experience of traversing the vast beauty of Denali National Park after spending a week gazing at glaciers on the cruise was the perfect balance of land and sea exploration. Regardless of age or mobility, this immersive opportunity is not to be missed.

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The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) is one of the most transformative pieces of legislation for Alaska in decades. This comprehensive package is the product of years of relentless, focused work, delivering historic wins for our state.

The legislation contains numerous provisions to unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource economy, deliver tax relief for hard-working Alaskans and small businesses, make the largest U.S. Coast Guard investment in history, secure the southern border and halt the flow of fentanyl, build up our Alaska-based military, upgrade Alaska’s aviation safety, strengthen Alaska’s health and nutrition programs, protect Alaska’s most vulnerable, and achieve historic savings for future generations.

Due to the hard work of our congressional delegation, I think it’s fair to say no state fared better from this bill. In the coming months, my team and I will be working to better inform Alaskans about this important legislation and dispel the falsehoods being spread in ad campaigns funded by the same far-left interest groups that always seek to crush Alaska’s economy and working families.

This op-ed is a start.

At its heart, the OBBB is a jobs bill. It will unleash Alaska’s private sector economy, generate billions of dollars in new revenues for the state, and create jobs for hard-working families. The OBBB mandates historic provisions to responsibly develop ANWR, NPR-A and Cook Inlet. The bill also increases Alaska’s share of future revenues from these federal lands to 70% and helps accelerate the Alaska LNG project.

Importantly, these provisions cement in statute regular lease sales to guard against attempts by future Democratic leaders to use regulations to shut down our economy, as was done with President Biden’s 70 executive orders and actions targeting Alaska — the “Last Frontier Lock-Up.”

The bill also dramatically benefits Alaska’s working families, enabling them to keep more of what they earn by extending the 2017 tax cuts and making them permanent, preventing what would have been a $4 trillion tax hike. We secured an increased child tax credit and standard deduction, small business deductions, no taxes on tips or overtime, and significant tax relief for seniors. The Council of Economic Advisors predicts this legislation will increase take-home pay for an average family by over $7,000.

The OBBB also achieves the most significant spending reductions in history. According to nonpartisan scorekeepers, the bill reduces federal spending by over $1.5 trillion and, using the current policy baseline, will reduce the deficit by $400 billion over ten years. That is before considering the pro-growth elements of the bill.

As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee overseeing the U.S. Coast Guard, I also fought to secure the largest investment in Coast Guard history — nearly $25 billion. This includes funding for 16 new icebreakers and $300 million to homeport the new Juneau icebreaker. The urgency of this cannot be overstated, with the Russians and Chinese racing to control our Arctic waters. And, with the “Golden Dome” initiative substantially funded by the OBBB, we’re building the next generation of homeland missile defense — Alaska being the cornerstone — to protect the entire country. The bill also commits over $100 million to redevelop existing Arctic infrastructure, like the Adak Naval Base.

This bill secures our southern border with the most robust enforcement package in a generation — $46 billion for the wall, billions more for Border Patrol and law enforcement and substantial resources to crack down on deadly fentanyl coming into Alaska.

Finally, I know Alaska has been flooded with dishonest ads by far-left groups — at the direction of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — scaring Alaskans with false claims that the OBBB will cause them to lose Medicare and Medicaid.

Here’s the truth. Medicare isn’t touched in the OBBB. Not one dollar in Medicaid benefits was cut for Alaskans. This bill actually strengthens health care in Alaska.

The only people who were advocating for Medicaid cuts for Alaskans were Sen. Schumer and Senate Democrats. They stripped out a provision I included in the bill to help Alaska’s rural hospitals and increase the federal match for Medicaid for Alaska, which would’ve amounted to hundreds of millions more dollars a year.

Further, Sen. Schumer tried, but failed, to strip out other significant funding — approximately $200 million a year for the next five years — for Alaska’s health care system.

I worked to make sure commonsense 20-hour-a-week work or volunteer requirements were included, ensuring able-bodied Americans utilizing these programs are contributing to our communities. But the bill has important exemptions — for disabled veterans, parents or guardians with children, individuals with disabilities or mental health challenges, Alaska Natives and those living in rural areas with few economic opportunities.

But Sen. Schumer’s anti-Alaska campaign wasn’t just aimed at our health care. He and Senate Democrats sought to specifically kill every positive provision for Alaska in this bill: ANWR, NPR-A, Cook Inlet, homeporting the Juneau icebreaker, the Adak Naval base, and greater flexibility on SNAP requirements. We successfully fought back, but one thing remains clear: Democrats in D.C. have once again demonstrated they are the anti-Alaska party.

Ultimately, national Democrats didn’t win in this bill. Alaskans did. From growing our economy, to tax relief for working families, to national defense, to securing our border, to strengthening our health care, this legislation reflects years of determined advocacy for Alaska. The final result is numerous historic wins for Alaska that will positively shape our state’s future for decades.

Sen. Dan Sullivan has represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate since he was first elected in 2014.

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The panel blowout aboard an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 was the result of more than four missing bolts, the National Transportation Safety Board reiterated in its final investigation report into the incident released Thursday.

The Jan. 5, 2024 blowout — which occurred shortly after the Alaska Airlines plane took off from Portland, Oregon — happened because of long-term shortcomings at Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency tasked with overseeing the manufacturer’s quality and safety processes, the NTSB determined.

Because Boeing’s instructions for employees lacked “clarity and conciseness,” workers missed opportunities to note that the panel had been removed during the aircraft’s assembly, the NTSB said. The panel was incorrectly reinstalled but, without a record of the work being done, it was not reinspected and left the factory with four crucial bolts missing.

Boeing knew of the deficiencies in its work instructions for a decade, the NTSB said in its report, but both Boeing and the FAA failed to fix the flawed process.

The blame for the panel blowout, then, did not hang on the shoulders of workers who failed to install the four bolts that would have held the panel in place, but instead on Boeing and the FAA, the NTSB said.

The safety board has made these declarations before, including at a June hearing when board members discussed the results of the 18-month-long investigation. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at that time that “an accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures,” adding that the “deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident” to Boeing and the FAA.

The final report released Thursday delves into more detail about what the NTSB found following months of interviews with Boeing and FAA employees, including where its record-keeping processes and work instructions for employees fell short.

What went wrong

On Jan. 5, 2024, on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, the first officer completed an external preflight walkaround and found nothing abnormal with the Max 9, which had rolled out of Boeing’s Renton, Washington, factory months before.

The flight’s taxi, takeoff and initial climb was uneventful, until the plane reached about 14,830 feet, when the cabin pressure suddenly dropped.

The captain heard flight attendants talking about a hole in the plane but, unable to communicate with one another, both the flight and cabin crews were uncertain about what had happened, the NTSB found.

The flight landed safely back in Portland, with some passengers and crew members reporting minor injuries. The left side of the plane had a hole that measured roughly 29 inches wide and 59 inches high. A seat back tray table, two seat headrests and nearby cabin interior panels were missing.

Months earlier, Boeing mechanics in the company’s Renton factory had removed that panel, known as a door plug because it fills a hole in the fuselage that can be used as an emergency exit for high-density seating aircraft.

Mechanics removed the panel to fix a problem with rivets. But, the NTSB found, none of the personnel working on the door plug generated a record that the panel had been removed.

Boeing mechanics then reinstalled the door plug, without four bolts meant to hold it in place. Because there was no removal record, no one conducted a final inspection to sign off that the door plug was reinstalled correctly.

After the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines — without the bolts in place — the door plug slowly slid upwards, until, during Flight 1282, it moved far enough up to separate from stop fittings pinning it in place. The loosened plug then flew out of the airframe, leaving a hole in the side of the aircraft.

The four bolts meant to hold the door plug in place were never found, the NTSB said.

Missed chances

The NTSB determined that Boeing workers missed two opportunities to prompt a reinspection of the door plug after it had been removed and reinstalled.

Though both were needed to properly follow Boeing’s work processes, just one of the two could have prompted a second look and caught the missing bolts, preventing the near catastrophe.

Boeing’s procedures direct workers to generate a “removal record” to document what parts of the airplane they took off and what tasks are then needed to assure the parts are re-installed correctly.

That removal record is required whenever there is a “disturbance of a previously accepted installation,” according to the NTSB’s report. In other words, whenever the removal would affect a job task that had already been inspected and approved. The removal would then require the earlier task be reinspected.

In one early discussion about the door plug, the NTSB learned that a senior manager told the door manager that “if removal (is) needed, a removal needs to (be) written first.”

Still, the NTSB determined that neither the door team manager nor any of the door team personnel on duty had any experience opening a door plug, nor any knowledge of who actually performed the work. A removal record was not generated.

Separately, Boeing also incorporates a “short stamp process,” which is meant to document work that couldn’t be completed in its initial phase of production and therefore has to “travel” through the factory. A “stamp” indicates that a portion of the work has been completed.

In this case, Boeing’s post accident review showed the short stamp process “did not clearly define the work remaining,” the NTSB said.

Though the short stamp process would not have negated the need for a removal record, it may have prompted a second look at the area and found that the bolts were missing, the NTSB said in its final report.

A systemic problem

The NTSB did not identify any individuals who worked on the removal and reinstallation of the door plug, and it’s not clear if the agency knows who performed those tasks.

But, the board made it clear in its final report that the incident was not the result of a single worker or group of workers who missed a crucial step in Boeing’s process. Instead, it was the result of a company-wide problem that had long been identified.

It found that Boeing’s instructions for removal records “lacked clarity, conciseness and ease of use.”

The specific instructions for generating a removal record were more than 50 pages long, directed workers to other instructions and “provided more exceptions about when a removal record was not needed than direction indicating when it was,” the NTSB wrote in its report.

“Boeing lacked the comprehensive training and clear guidance needed to ensure that its … 737 door team personnel and others could consistently meet quality and safety standards,” the NTSB continued.

Boeing had been aware that its work instructions were not preparing employees to follow the removal process for at least 10 years, the agency determined. Those specific work instructions were referenced in 16 compliance issue reports to the FAA from 2018 to 2023, including instances of workers failing to generate a removal when it was required, the NTSB found.

Boeing had “substantively” revised the instructions 11 times between 2013 and 2023, but its proposed changes, which had been accepted by the FAA, were “ineffective,” the NTSB said. Furthermore, the FAA lacked the processes to keep track of discrepancies and nonconformances related to Boeing’s removal process.

A call for change

Boeing has since updated its instructions and training, including adding more training on when and why removal documentation is required.

Still, the NTSB said in its report that “effective guidance and recurrent training are critical” to ensure employees know what to do when a removal arises.

The NTSB, which does not have regulatory or enforcement authority, recommended Boeing update its on-the-job training to identify tasks that are necessary for manufacturing workers to be considered “fully qualified.”

That’s in part because the NTSB found that training for “nonroutine tasks,” including opening a door plug and generating a removal record, was not part of a structured program, leaving many workers unprepared.

The NTSB also recommended Boeing implement a grading system for its training program and develop a process to identify quality issues that result from human error, in order to prevent the same error from reoccurring.

When it comes to Boeing’s oversight, the NTSB said it was “encouraged by the FAA’s initial progress” but recommended the agency revise its compliance enforcement system, audit activity and record-keeping system.

It also recommended that the FAA convene an independent panel to review Boeing’s safety culture.

In response to the NTSB’s recommendations first publicized at the June hearing, the FAA said it has “fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing … and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues.”

Boeing could not be reached for comment Thursday.