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Alaska Airlines and Singapore Airlines were tasked with transporting the vaccine to their geographically troubled homelands.
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The first doses reached remote Alaskan communities less than three days after the first trucks left Kalamazoo, Michigan, while Singapore became the first country to receive the vaccine a week later.
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Passenger airlines and cargo carriers have been instrumental in bringing the vaccine to the ends of the world.
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The first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine left Kalamazoo, Michigan, on December 13, and within days, even the most remote locations were able to start vaccines thanks to the coordinated efforts of dispatchers, carriers, airlines and even agencies law enforcement agencies.
Cargo carriers UPS Airlines and FedEx Express were honored to fly the first doses from Michigan, but passenger airlines also proved to be an integral part of the airline vaccine distribution network. United Airlines, for example, flew with the first doses from the United States of Belgium just after Thanksgiving, weeks before the Food and Drug Administration endorsed the drug.
Read More: 6 cargo airlines and freight operators ready to win big as Moderna follows Pfizer toward FDA approval for its COVID-19 vaccine
Singapore Airlines and Alaska Airlines were also tasked with flying the vaccine, but both have a more exclusive mandate to deliver the drugs to end the pandemic in their countries. Singapore and Alaska are as far away as possible from Pfizer factories in Brussels and Michigan, making air travel the only viable option.
But despite the geography, the two regions were able to receive their first doses of Pfizer’s historic vaccine days after their emergency clearance, thanks to their respective airlines.
See how they did it.
Singapore Airlines sent its freighters to Europe to bring the vaccine back.
The Boeing 747-400F, as the largest aircraft in the Singapore cargo fleet, was the aircraft of choice, with the shipment sliding easily through the exclusive nose port, not found on many other freighters.
Read more: Boeing shutting down production of the 747 means that cargo carriers will lose an important feature and be left in trouble when it leaves
The Jumbo Jet served as a lifeline for Singapore during the pandemic, bringing food and supplies to the island nation whose borders are practically closed to the outside world. Now he is bringing home the COVID-19 vaccine.
Singapore is the first Asian country to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, making the arrival even more historic.
The shipment left Brussels on December 20 and arrived in Singapore almost 16 hours later, after a quick supply stop in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. No time was wasted as the shipment received priority treatment at both ends.
Source: FlightAware
In preparation for the flight, Singapore Airlines tested the Brussels-Singapore route to ensure a smooth flight, but also to monitor dry ice on board.
Copious amounts of dry ice are needed to keep the Pfizer vaccine at the required -94 degrees Fahrenheit temperature.
Source: Inside COVID-19 vaccine air transport: How carriers plan to distribute the world’s most valuable drugs to the market
Each of these boxes is packed with at least 20 kg of dry ice to keep the vaccine at its required temperature.
If the temperature is not maintained, the vaccine may spoil and become ineffective, a risk that Pfizer and its customers cannot afford, as each dose of the vaccine is vital to ending the pandemic.
The problem facing airlines, however, is that dry ice is sublimated into carbon dioxide, which can incapacitate the crew. That is why dry ice is considered a dangerous asset in aviation.
But airlines have been looking to regulators and manufacturers to get revised dry ice limits to carry as much vaccine as possible. United Airlines, for example, has been allowed to fly up to five times more vaccines by the Federal Aviation Administration than would normally be allowed.
Read More: How United Airlines overcame one of the biggest limitations on the transportation of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to the US
The limitations of dry ice are also the reason why this Boeing 747 was not filled to the brim with the vaccine, as regulations did not allow it, making transport to remote regions like Southeast Asia even more difficult.
Several flights are likely to be needed to inoculate the entire country of five million people, as two doses are needed.
Once in Singapore, the vaccine was immediately transferred to a refrigerated warehouse to await transport to the country’s hospitals and inoculation centers.
On the other side of the world, in the United States, Alaska Airlines was tasked with bringing vaccines to rural communities in its homonymous state.
Alaska has seen more than 40,000 cases of COVID-19 with nearly 200 deaths, which the vaccine aims to prevent.
Source: Alaska Department of Health and Social Services
Alaska’s difficult geography makes transporting the vaccine even more difficult, as not all cities are connected by road to Anchorage, the state’s main logistics center.
“The state of Alaska is unique in that 80% of communities are accessible only by air or water and most vaccines must be delivered by plane,” wrote Alaska Airlines in a blog.
Source: Alaska Airlines
Alaska frequently operates multi-stage flights, known as the “milk run”, which serves some of the state’s smallest and most remote communities as a means of transporting food, supplies and people.
The shortest flight is only 31 miles between Petersburg and Wrangell. The route is also the shortest operated by a major airline in the United States.
Almost every city on Alaska’s 49th state route map will receive the airline’s vaccine, a spokesman told Business Insider, from Barrow to the Aleutian Islands.
And the box designed by Pfizer and Softbox can be loaded onto any Alaskan passenger or cargo plane.
Some doses were transferred to even smaller planes to be transported by Alaskan Bush, where residents boarded jet skis to receive the dose.
Source: Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation
Despite the obstacles, remote cities like Kodiak were able to receive doses as early as December 15, just two days after the first trucks left Pfizer’s Kalamazoo facility.
Source: Alaska Airlines
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