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Alaska Coastal Airlines

defunct airline in the United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ4708515 ↗
Source-derived summary

Alaska Coastal Airlines was an airline in the United States. It was formed in 1939 as a result of the merger of Alaska Air Transport and Marine Airways. On April 1, 1962, Alaska Coastal Airlines merged with Ellis Air Lines, trading for a while as Alaska Coastal-Ellis Airlines. Alaska Coastal Airlines was taken over by Alaska Airlines in April 1968.

History

Alaska Air Transport was formed by Sheldon Bruce "Shell" Simmons (October 8, 1908 – November 16, 1994) at Juneau in the summer of 1935 with one Stinson SM-2AC aircraft named Patco. Alaska Air Transport bought out Irving Airways in September 1936. Irving Airways had been started by Wilbur Irving at Juneau in the spring of 1936.

Marine Airways was formed by Alex Holden, Jim Davis and M E Monagle in Juneau in July 1936. Holden bought a Bellanca CH-300 Pacemaker NC196N in August 1936. In 1938, Simmons used Bellanca NC47M in the rescue of survivors of the Patterson, an oceangoing freighter which had run aground at Cape Fairweather, 150 miles northwest of Juneau.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Alaska Coastal Airlines” is defunct airline in the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Alaska, Coastal and Airlines, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 1962, 1968, 1908—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1939-01-01. For this dossier, Alaska, Coastal and Airlines is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “defunct airline in the United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4708515. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1962, 1968 and 1908.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Alaska Coastal Airlines”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Alaska Coastal Airlines primary sources, Alaska Coastal Airlines archive and Alaska research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alaska Coastal Airlines”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Alaska Coastal Airlines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.