Ice Airport Alaska Show Summary, Upcoming Episodes and TV Guide

[EPG Series] Witness wild weather, emergency landings, animal invaders, and pandemic panics at Alaska's Ted Stevens Airport (ANC).

Military pilots perform a midair helicopter refueling, a veteran mechanic must fix the engine of a charter bound for the Arctic, and a cargo plane makes an emergency landing over Anchorage.

The crews at the Ice Airports must handle a premature birth, the theft of an ancient treasure and the arrival of a lost military hero.

Passenger numbers at Ted Stevens International Airport are up by 93%, but a freak storm is about to throw Christmas into chaos; at Fairbanks International Airport a 737 is forced to dock for the night and is in danger of freezing over.

During the pandemic, cargo boomed at the Ice Airports, but passenger numbers fell greatly, leading to the grounding of some pilots. To regain his wings, Captain Gerry Moriarty must overcome a series of virtual emergencies in a $12 million flight simulator. Inside Ted Stevens, some very real crises have arrived in the form of an armed, suicidal passenger in the terminal and a suspicious powder at Customs and Border Protection. And at Northern Air Cargo, the race is on to get 72 champion sled dogs to Bethel before a large storm moves in.

Arctic conditions, rough terrain, and remote homesteads make landing planes in Alaska a white-knuckled adventure. At Fairbanks International, crews race to clear the runway of snow for an approaching aircraft. In Anaktuvuk Pass, a 75-year-old war plane is used to make a car delivery but first must land on an unprepared frozen ice strip. And back at Ted Stevens, the captain of a 747 sends a distress call. Without wheels to touch down, he may be forced to land his 900,000-pound aircraft on its fuselage while traveling at 170 mph.

It's mid-winter in Alaska, when temperatures stay locked below freezing for months and snow accumulations reach 80 inches. But at Ted Stevens, the flights continue no matter what Mother Nature brings. In 70 years, the airport has never shut down for bad weather, but a heavy storm, a rookie 'snow boss,' and broken equipment put their remarkable streak in jeopardy. And to make matters worse, a 5.3 magnitude earthquake shakes the airport, grounding all planes until the safety inspections team can check the area and aircraft for damage.

Every year, up to six million tons of snow fall at Ted Stevens International Airport (ANC) in winter, and this season, there are no signs of the bad weather letting up. The airfield clearing team has been working 24/7 to keep the runways open during a storm that would shut down other airports in minutes. Witness the precisely choreographed dance of multi-million-dollar machinery used to plow potentially lethal ice and snow and to clear the 6,000 lights and high tech instrument landing systems so pilots can safely land their planes.

In the depths of winter, Ted Stevens Airport in Anchorage operates in the dark for up to 19 hours a day, so its state-of-the-art lighting system is vital to keep planes moving. Without it, air traffic shuts down. Follow the airport's electrician foreman and his team as they race to fix a string of 60 runway lights that have gone out. Then head to the busiest seaplane base in the world, where pilots fly more than 150 missions a day into the Alaskan wilderness, always at risk of being stranded in temperatures as low as -35 degrees.

Ted Stevens International Airport is situated in the coldest, wildest state in America, and when winter approaches, it only gets colder and wilder. Bear and bird activity ramps up before the big freeze, giving wildlife managers all they can handle to keep the runways and airspace clear. And the season's first blizzard gives the airfield maintenance crew a taste of what's to come in the following months. See how the expert teams of workers keep the airport open and the traffic moving, on the runway, in the terminal, and in the sky.