Is the Misty Fjords Flightseeing Tour Worth It?

The Misty Fjords floatplane tour is the most spectacular two hours available from any Alaska cruise port and the excursion most likely to be cancelled. Whether to book it comes down to how you weigh a remarkable experience against a real chance of not having it.

Every Ketchikan port call presents the same gamble: the single most spectacular excursion available from the port is also the one most likely to be cancelled.

What Misty Fjords is

A 2.3 million acre wilderness east of Ketchikan within Tongass National Forest, carved by ice into fjords whose granite walls rise as much as 3,000 feet almost vertically from the sea. There are no roads. Access is by floatplane or boat, and both leave from the Ketchikan waterfront.

The flightseeing tour

Roughly two hours dock to dock, of which about 75 to 90 minutes is flying. The route crosses the Behm Canal, threads between the fjord walls at altitudes that put granite close on both sides, and lands on a remote lake or sheltered fjord arm, where the pilot cuts the engine and lets the silence register.

The landing is the part people remember. Standing on a float in the middle of a wilderness lake with no other human trace in sight is not replicable on any other mainstream Alaska excursion.

Cost: $280 to $400 per person. Aircraft: typically de Havilland Beavers and Otters carrying six to ten passengers, every seat with a window.

The weather problem

Ketchikan averages around 140 inches of rain a year, and floatplanes need visibility that rain and low cloud remove. Cancellations are a routine feature of Ketchikan flying, not a rare event.

How to improve your odds:

1. Book the earliest slot of the day. Morning conditions are often calmer, and a cancelled early flight can sometimes be rebooked later in the same call. A cancelled last flight is simply cancelled.
2. Prefer May and June, which are drier than August and September.
3. Book refundable, which reputable operators offer for weather cancellations as standard.
4. Have a plan B decided in advance, because you will be standing on the dock at 8:30 am with a free day. The Totem Bight tour or a walk of Creek Street and the Discovery Center are the natural fallbacks.

The boat alternative

The Misty Fjords boat tour takes four to five hours, costs $180 to $260, and reaches the same fjords by water. From sea level the walls are arguably more imposing, rising directly overhead rather than spread below, and boats run in almost any weather.

The honest comparison: the plane is the better experience and the boat is the better bet. On a short Ketchikan call, the boat also consumes most of your day, which matters if you wanted to see the town.

Who should book which

Book the plane if: this is a once in a lifetime trip, the budget absorbs $300 plus per person with a real chance of refund instead of flight, and you are sailing in the drier early season.

Book the boat if: you want certainty, the lower price matters, or you are prone to airsickness in small aircraft, which manoeuvre noticeably in fjord terrain.

Book neither if: your Ketchikan call is under seven hours and you would rather have the town, the totems and Creek Street at a walking pace. That is a legitimate choice, Ketchikan is the best free port in Alaska.

Photography notes

• Ask for a seat away from the wing strut when booking, and clean your window before takeoff
• A polariser helps with water reflections but costs light in dim conditions, judge on the day
• Wide lens for the fjords, and shoot at 1/1000 or faster through the window
• The lake landing is the shot: the plane on floats, the walls behind

More technique in Alaska cruise photography tips, and the full excursion rankings in best Alaska cruise excursions.