2% of the population can fly
To put this in perspective, per 2019 estimations, there are roughly 730,000 thousand permanent residents in Alaska. This is a pretty low figure, considering the sheer size of the state. In Manhattan alone, there are 1.7 million living in just 36 square miles. Anyway, of the 730,000 people in Alaska, 2% of them have a license to fly.
This might not seem like much, but that’s about 14,000 people in Alaska who can fly out of the 650,000 people in the US with a pilot’s license. People in Alaska need to learn to take to the sky as a means of getting around.