Yakutat Airport guide

Yakutat Airport (ICAO PAYA) sits about 3 miles southeast of the town of Yakutat, on the Gulf of Alaska coast. Yakutat has no road link to the rest of the state, so the airport and the sea are the only ways in. Alaska Airlines serves the field under the federal Essential Air Service program.

The site dates to 1940, when the US Army built Yakutat Army Airfield as part of its Alaska defense program. The state of Alaska now owns the airport and runs it through the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. It has two runways: 11/29, an asphalt strip of roughly 7,700 feet, and 2/20, a 6,475-foot concrete strip.

The FAA counted 11,923 enplanements here in 2024, which makes Yakutat a primary commercial service nonhub airport. The busiest scheduled routes run to Anchorage, Seattle and Juneau. Most other traffic is general aviation and air taxi flying. Fishing lodges, the surf and the glaciers of Wrangell-St. Elias and Glacier Bay country bring seasonal visitors. Wildlife also shares the field: in 2020 an Alaska Airlines 737 struck a bear while landing.