3 ms·

Conspicuously absent from the story is why the lights were out in the first place, but good job, her.

• whats_a_quasar 5y ago
  It's a small town in a remote area, I expect the answer is simply that things break and take time to be fixed. And I bet nighttime landings are uncommon
  • aksss 5y ago
    The government funds the airport, the lights, the runway like at every small village in Alaska that has an airport. It’s because local ‘kids’ broke them all running by on quads with bats for funsies, counting on the feds or state to just replace them time after time - it costs the village nothing until it does. Rando source with lede buried in bottom paragraph but I’m sure one could find more local ones with some digging: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-runway-lights-failed-so-villagers-used-their-headlights-to-aid-an-airlift/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-runway-lights-...
• fencepost 5y ago
  It's likely that night landings in a town of less than 60 people are uncommon - particularly in August when sunset ranges between 9:30 and 10:45 PM depending on when in the month it is. If it was early in the month they may have just barely missed being able to land without lights.
  • aksss 5y ago
    You don’t need to speculate, it’s known - see reply to adjacent comment. The lights are broken in acts of vandalism by the residents, regularly.
    • fencepost 5y ago
      Interesting, I wonder if there's a direct economic benefit when someone comes in to fix the lights (along with possibly vandalism for the sake of breaking something and maybe a sense of making the state pay for perceived wrongs).