Takotna to get $21 million airport

By Tim Mowry

Published Wednesday, June 24, 2009

FAIRBANKS — The village of Takotna is getting a new $21 million airport, which translates to almost $500,000 per person in the small Bush village about 300 miles west of Fairbanks.

The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities received a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to build the airport.

State officials aren’t thrilled about having to spend $21 million on an airport for a village of 46 people, but it’s not really an option, said Roger Maggard, DOT’s airport development manager.

“The fact of it is, in order to meet all the dimensional requirements that the FAA requires for funding an airport, they do become quite expensive,” Maggard said. “It doesn’t matter in terms of airport costs whether it’s 50 people or 250 people or 500 people. It still requires the same airport facility.”

The $21 million grant for the airport was part of more than $70 million worth of grants and contracts awarded to communities throughout Alaska by the U.S. Department of Transportation last week, according to a press release from the Alaska congressional delegation.

At 3,300 feet long and 75 feet wide, the new airport in Takotna will be almost twice the size of the old one, Maggard said.

The current airport in Takotna is 1,700 feet long and 45 feet wide.

The new airport will be located at a new site because the old one is built into the side of a hill, Maggard said. The new facility also will be lighted. The current airstrip does not have lights. Maggard described the airport in Takotna as “very substandard.”

“The existing airport is the state’s airport, and it needed to be upgraded,” Maggard said. “We did a planning analysis and determined the best thing to do was relocate it to an area that was better able to meet the dimensional requirements of the FAA.”

The FAA will provide 95 percent of the funding for the airport with the state supplying the remaining

5 percent, Maggard said.

The Takotna airport is one of 256 rural airports in Alaska managed by DOT. The agency spends an average of about $140 million per year on rural airport projects, most of which is funded under the federal airport improvement program, Maggard said.

“Most of the major projects in small villages are cases where the state may have built an airport a long time ago without federal funding and it was not built to modern standards, so we’re going back in to upgrade them,” he said.

The airport is essentially the only way in and out of Takotna during summer months, though riverboats can sometimes be used to reach nearby McGrath, about 20 miles away on the Kuskokwim River, depending on water levels in the Takotna River.

“They do have river access in the summertime, but the river gets shallow so even that is questionable at times, Maggard said.

Fairbanks news miner

The bush pilots will be impressed.  Apparently not a whole lot of state officials are.

Still, 21 million is a fair chunk of change for what amounts to a chunk of road. Think of it: It’s roughly the equivalent of a quarter-mile of four-lane freeway, including lights. I guess the ‘minimum standards’ are high enough that they can’t just slap down a layer of asphalt on a flat stretch and call it a day. I know that post 9/11 a lot of smaller airports had to meet standards that amounted to ‘can a passenger jet land here?’.

Robin Bobcat - 24 June 2009 11:31 PM

Still, 21 million is a fair chunk of change for what amounts to a chunk of road. Think of it: It’s roughly the equivalent of a quarter-mile of four-lane freeway, including lights. I guess the ‘minimum standards’ are high enough that they can’t just slap down a layer of asphalt on a flat stretch and call it a day. I know that post 9/11 a lot of smaller airports had to meet standards that amounted to ‘can a passenger jet land here?’.

Even with the proposed upgrade the runway is way too short for most passenger jets.  A lot of prop jobs could use it as they tend to have lower airspeed at landing but most jets would be SOL.

Yeah, it’s a pretty small airfield.  Even the little private grass airstrips around here are mostly longer than that.  And an airport facility is a bit more complex than is a stretch of road.

While that seems like a lot, unfortunately all government projects cost a lot.  Right now at work I am calculating quantities for a small road project out on the reservation.  I have to take the original existing ground and compare it to the design compared to the actual as-built.  It takes some doing to coax those numbers out of my drawing software, lots of connecting the dots.  And that is just part of it, previously another guy entered in all the information to do stakeouts of everything from the centerlien of the road, to gutter lip, top back of curb, sidewalk, curb cuts, cut and fill staking, bluetopping, etc, etc.  I have a set of plans in front of me that is 168 pages long, and that is just for a road that is just a little over 7000 feet long. I just spent this morning an a good portion of yesterday verifying that the amount of curb and sidewalk to be paid closely resembles the amount called for in the plans so they know what to pay the contractor. I imagine for an airport it would be much more in depth.  More government agencies involved meaning more oversight, more people to put their two cents in, more standards to follow.  Not only the Department of Transportation is involved but also the Federal Aviation Administration, probably the Federal Communications Commission, along with others.
Pay for government projects is based upon federal pay scales, which is way higher than a normal worker would make for similar work that wasn’t government backed.  I loved working on forest service projects back in Missouri, I made a couple dollars more an hour for the same work.
I think if a lot of red tape and unnecessary oversight were cut out, things could be built much cheaper for the same quality, but agencies have to justify their existence by sticking their nose into everything.

gray - 25 June 2009 12:37 AM

Robin Bobcat - 24 June 2009 11:31 PM

Still, 21 million is a fair chunk of change for what amounts to a chunk of road. Think of it: It’s roughly the equivalent of a quarter-mile of four-lane freeway, including lights. I guess the ‘minimum standards’ are high enough that they can’t just slap down a layer of asphalt on a flat stretch and call it a day. I know that post 9/11 a lot of smaller airports had to meet standards that amounted to ‘can a passenger jet land here?’.

Even with the proposed upgrade the runway is way too short for most passenger jets.  A lot of prop jobs could use it as they tend to have lower airspeed at landing but most jets would be SOL.

Depends on the circumstances. I never said it would be big enough for takeoff, but landing? You’d be amazed at what you can put down a jet in if you’re not picky.

Robin Bobcat - 25 June 2009 09:51 AM

gray - 25 June 2009 12:37 AM

Robin Bobcat - 24 June 2009 11:31 PM

Still, 21 million is a fair chunk of change for what amounts to a chunk of road. Think of it: It’s roughly the equivalent of a quarter-mile of four-lane freeway, including lights. I guess the ‘minimum standards’ are high enough that they can’t just slap down a layer of asphalt on a flat stretch and call it a day. I know that post 9/11 a lot of smaller airports had to meet standards that amounted to ‘can a passenger jet land here?’.

Even with the proposed upgrade the runway is way too short for most passenger jets.  A lot of prop jobs could use it as they tend to have lower airspeed at landing but most jets would be SOL.

Depends on the circumstances. I never said it would be big enough for takeoff, but landing? You’d be amazed at what you can put down a jet in if you’re not picky.

True.  It would have something the size of an RJ or smaller.  A 737-700, which is an average size passenger jet, needs at least 4,400 ft to land and about 6,100 to take off.  Since aircraft never land right at the end of the runway you can subtract about 200 - 1000 ft from the length depending on touchdown point which really lessens the amount of usable runway.  The guys who fly twin otters are probably loving this.  They are thinking “Finally I get to land on a real runway”.

Robin Bobcat - 25 June 2009 09:51 AM

Depends on the circumstances. I never said it would be big enough for takeoff, but landing? You’d be amazed at what you can put down a jet in if you’re not picky.

Especially if you’re not worried about the airplane being able to ever take off again afterward.

Accipiter - 25 June 2009 11:20 AM

Robin Bobcat - 25 June 2009 09:51 AM

Depends on the circumstances. I never said it would be big enough for takeoff, but landing? You’d be amazed at what you can put down a jet in if you’re not picky.

Especially if you’re not worried about the airplane being able to ever take off again afterward.

Exactly. You’d probably need *half* the runway a ‘minimum landing’ would require, if you don’t mind the underside of the plane being shredded or blowing out the tires when you brake hard.

Even still, it likely *will* suffice for smaller planes. A Learjet should be able to take off from that, and a medium-sized passenger jet should be able to make an emergency landing without complaint.

They need to have a system like aircraft carriers have that hold back the plane until the engines are at full speed then release them.

NEO - 25 June 2009 01:30 PM

They need to have a system like aircraft carriers have that hold back the plane until the engines are at full speed then release them.

You mean a catapult.