Alaskan pilot Noel Wien founded Alaska’s first scheduled airline in Fairbanks in July of 1924. That was also the year that Wien made the first non-stop flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage. He later was the first pilot to fly from Fairbanks to Nome, to fly across the Arctic Circle, to fly from Alaska to Siberia and to fly an injured person to a hospital.
Also in 1924, Fairbanks high school science teacher and pilot Carl Ben Eielson flew an experimental air mail flight between Fairbanks and McGrath. His several-hour, 271-mile flight one way supplanted a dog-team mail delivery route that took as much as three weeks.
That was also the year four army aircraft capable of landing both on water and land made a round-the-world flight. These float planes touched down at Sitka, Seward, Chignik, Port Moller, Dutch Harbor, Atka and Attu on their 175-day, 26,503-mile globe-circling trip that began and ended at Seattle.
Read more about the amazing history of aviation in Alaska.