Photos by Sandra Quinn. "We had the first plane land last Wednesday! Lots of ice between Big Diomede and Little Diomede," Quinn writes.
Villagers heading out to meet the first plane to land in Diomede in two years.
The tiny Bering Strait village that became stranded when it lost passenger flight service for months last year is now enjoying regular plane service.
Fixed-wing planes began landing this week on a makeshift runway of flat sea ice outside Diomede, says teacher Willis Ferenbaugh.
That’s a big deal, considering the ice wasn’t good enough to build a runway last year, and normally the only way to fly in out of the village is by helicopter.
“I don’t know if they had to do any grooming …the place where the planes are landing is just a really flat expanse of the ocean,” said Ferenbaugh, who is spending his second year in the Ingalikmiut Eskimo village.
Diomede is roughly two miles from Russia. The runway sits about a quarter mile from town across jumbled ice, the teacher said.
Last year, the company that provides mail service by helicopter stopped taking passengers to and from Diomede for as many as six months. Ferenbaugh said passenger flights on an Evergreen helicopter returned around Dec. 19.
“At least some passengers were making it on and off on the mail flights,” said the teacher, who reached the island on a crab boat from Nome while the village was marooned.
To prevent the island from becoming stranded again in the future, Sen. Mark Begich has suggested the feds and the state split the cost of subsidizing passenger helicopter flights to the village.
The total bill could be up to $5,000 per person, per year, based on estimates e-mailed by the governor's office last month.
There are a couple options, wrote Randy Ruaro, deputy chief of staff to Gov. Sean Parnell:
-- Subsidizing weekly helicopter service from Diomede to Nome and back would run $372,765 a year.
-- Twice weekly flights could cost an estimated $649,344 a year.
The idea is that the feds would pay at least half in either case. An estimated 128 people live in Diomede, according to the state.
The village or another agency could also pitch in to cover the subsidies, though Diomede officials tell me the community doesn't have the money.
The state wrote the U.S. secretaries of transportation and health in December, saying that all the money that the state, village, Norton Sound Health Corporation and others already spend to enable air transportation to Diomede should count toward that 50 percent match.
The letter, from state Transportation Commissioner Leo von Scheben, also suggested the village might be eligible for federal grants.
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