The $555,000 Small Community Air Service Development Program grant not only subsidizes passenger tickets; it pays the $8,000 per year tab for liability insurance, covering the hodgepodge of island airstrips, many of them privately owned, where PIA routinely lands.
PIA still cannot fly passengers to North Haven — the Witherspoon strip, the only available airstrip for this kind of service is still 200 feet too short to qualify for insuring the delivery of people, and the Watson strip remains closed for anything other than mail delivery and emergency evacuations. “We estimate $35,000 to $40,000 a year in lost income because we can’t fly summer traffic into North Haven,” estimates Waters.
This summer the municipal airstrip on Vinalhaven will undergo major renovation, thanks to $75,000 that LifeFlight received from the state as part of a 2003 transportation bond, according to Tom Judge, LifeFlight executive director. This July, Vinalhaven’s gravel runway will be widened, trenched and drained; overgrown trees on either side will be brushed back and the middle of the runway will be brought up an additional seven to eight inches, according to PIA’s Waters.