Cargo Connections

For Alaska Air Cargo Managing Director Adam Drouhard, the title may be new, but his history and expertise with the team run deep. Since he started at Alaska Airlines in 2007 as a cargo call center agent, Adam has supported our team and our customers through roles in sales and finance as well as capacity and fleet planning. He has a lifelong love of aviation – earning his pilot’s license while still in high school. And his roots in rural Washington give him a strong appreciation for the remote communities we serve in the state of Alaska and across the West.

As Adam took the helm in a busy spring that also brought the birth of his second son, he shared some of his priorities for the cargo team and looked ahead to the exciting opportunities he sees coming for Alaska Air Cargo and the air-freight industry:

What drew you to work with the Alaska Air Cargo team early in your career?

Adam: “The cargo work rang true to my own experiences growing up in an agricultural area. I understood quickly what we mean to the supply chain for communities – especially in the state of Alaska, but also in other rural places we serve in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. Logistics are a challenge, and these are close-knit communities that rely on helping each other. That’s the kind of role we play in cargo.”

What’s one thing you learned in your early years with cargo that still guides you today?

Adam: “Never miss an opportunity to do the right thing. Over the years, we’ve found ways to step up for the communities we serve. The latest one is our push to support the COVID-19 vaccine distribution in Alaska. We focused on getting it where it needed to be and being part of a key supply chain for something that was unprecedented. It kind of goes back to the Nome dog-sled race to get medicine out to that community [in 1925]. This was another kind of historic moment.”

What are your biggest priorities as managing director?

Adam: “The immediate emphasis for me is making sure we’re doing the right things in staffing and taking care of our people. As the industry wakes up this year, all airlines are going through this churn. We’re getting people hired as fast as we can. We want to make sure we address customer wait times and that we’re an easy company to work with.

“Then there’s the fleet: We’re in active discussion around what the future fleet looks like for cargo. We know there is opportunity for growth. Right now, we’re going through a process of projecting that out for the years ahead.

“And innovation. We’ve got to get our infrastructure up to speed. We’re already moving toward building something new and innovative on our booking platform, for our customer portals and for our tracking devices out in the field. For the future, we’re making sure we create an environment that is hassle-free for our employees and our customers.”

This spring, we’ve increased the number of cities with year-round nonstop service to Anchorage (ANC) – adding routes to Chicago (ORD) and Las Vegas (LAS), and expanding service to Phoenix (PHX) and Maui (OGG) from seasonal to year-round.

Three new cities also get summer-season nonstop routes: Denver (DEN), Minneapolis (MSP) and San Francisco (SFO). With 11 destinations, this gives us more nonstop flights between Anchorage and cities across the country than any other carrier.