St George Island Airport

What was my "job" on St. George? Among the millions of birds that breed and nest on St. George are hundreds of thousands of Kittiwakes - both Black-legged and Red-legged. Given certain weather conditions, especially on windy days, many of these kittiwakes like to loaf on the airport runway. Of course, this presents a significant hazard for passenger and freight planes during landing and take-off. My job was to keep these birds off of the runway when flights were due to land.

The airport was moved from the north side of the island near the town to the south side near the harbor about 1992. Originally, the runway was gravel, but it was paved about 4 years ago. The first terminal building was "affectionately" referred to as "Apollo" because of its resemblance to the moon landing vehicle. The present terminal facility, while not very fancy, is adequate and much better than the original. There are three scheduled passenger flights to St. George per week and an occasional unscheduled flight or charter passenger flight. Saab 340 aircraft are used for passenger flights. Freight/cargo flights are unscheduled and erratic in nature, requiring continual monitoring to determine when they may be arriving. The arrival of cargo flights is announced to the residents by phone and over VHF radio and usually results in a rather disorganized scramble because folks are anxious to get items they may have been ordered a month or more previously. When planes were scheduled to arrive, I usually headed to the airport about an hour or so beforehand. If kittiwakes were on the runway, I would harass them with my pickup and then turn on at least half of the eight propane canons that were set to fire perhaps once a minute or so. Groups of loafing kittiwakes often numbered in the thousands. But the canons were quite effective in keeping them from sitting on the runway, so other scare tactics, such as shotgun propelled firecrackers were seldom needed to keep the runway clear.The only real problems with the propane canons was to keep them operational during long periods of fog and mist. A reliable supply of propane is a potential future concern since the cost is quite high. Presently, it costs $60 to fill each 25 gallon cylinder. In 2011, propane may not be available from sources on the island so supplies will have to be shipped specially to St. George for the propane canons, a potentially expensive option. This "job" of mine seemed to be fairly simple and for the most part it was. But fog and mist frequently interfered with landing schedules so flight delays were common, and indeed, frequently the rule. Some days, there was a wait of 3-4 hours or so before a decision was made regarding the cancellation of a flight from the mainland. Patience was a requisite aspect of the job!!