FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Generations of pilots once came north for adventure and to hone their skills in small planes, flying the Alaskan bush in the nation's most aviation-dependent state.

Their derring-do, in turn, helped create the Alaskan mystique.

But now a shortage of pilots - global in scope, fueled by the growth of aviation in Asia and a wave of retirements - is rippling across Alaska. A state with six times as many pilots per capita as the rest of the nation, and the need for every one of them to connect its many far-flung dots on the map, is rewriting the equations of supply and demand.

Competition is pushing up salaries and luring pilots and mechanics to jobs in the lower 48 states. Airlines are grooming pilots from within, bypassing the old system that made Alaska a proving ground where a pilot could log the thousands of hours of flight time needed to qualify for a major airline job. International freight haulers have also hired away Alaskan pilots as Anchorage has become a refueling and crew-change hub for aircraft flying between Asia and North America.

"The pilot shortage is affecting the whole commercial aviation industry from the beginning to the end, the small to the large, and I think Alaska is going to get hit hard," said Bill Thompson, 47, who left the state in 2015 for a job with an airline in Minneapolis.

That flying small planes in Alaska is dangerous is part of the shifting dynamic. From 1990 to 2009, more than a third of all commuter and air taxi crashes in the nation, and about a fifth of the fatal crashes, occurred in Alaska, according to federal figures.

Those hazards, on top of a worsening pilot shortage, are making some researchers and entrepreneurs see opportunity for pilotless drone aircraft to fill the gap. Researchers and pilots say they see a time - sooner or later, depending on when federal safety regulation might allow it - when mail, medicine or groceries might be delivered to remote villages by drone.

"Is it technologically feasible to do it right now? The answer is yes," said Nickolas D. Macchiarella, a professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "And one of the first places it could occur is Alaska."

Ben Kellie, 30, with his brother Nick, 27, founded a drone company, K2 Dronotics, in Anchorage last year. Their father, Mike Kellie, was a swashbuckling bush pilot of the old school, they said, who arrived in Alaska with a duffel bag and $500 to his name, wanting only to fly. Drones, said Ben Kellie, the company's chief executive and chief engineer, are the future and are less likely to produce injuries or harm if they crash.

"In Alaska, you can fly for hundreds of miles, and if you have issues you're going to hit tundra or a spruce tree," he said.

Carl France once considered the pilot's life, but decided the future was pilotless.

"I decided I'd get bored, flying back and forth from the same place," said France, 30, chief executive of a drone startup.