Becky Kunayak left the island community of Diomede by plane on May 20, for a trip to Anchorage to get her tonsils out. While she was gone, Diomede's sea-ice airstrip broke up, and it took her almost a month to get home -- and then only after she risked a 27-mile crossing of Bering Strait in a small boat. The Nome Nugget reports that villagers are once again without air passenger service after a similar crisis last summer. There's no place on Little Diomede Island to build a real airstrip.

When the ice goes out, the village is left to rely on helicopter service for the transportation of mail, goods and, previously, people. While a helicopter still travels weekly to Diomede when weather permits, village residents are generally no longer comprise part of the payload.

The inevitable loss of the ice runway puts the village back in the transportation limbo it experienced last summer when Evergreen Helicopters of Alaska began using a different model of helicopter to fulfill its contract to deliver mail. The shift prompted Evergreen to no longer offer passengers service. Before last July, when space allowed, seats were available for purchase to those looking to travel between the mainland and the island.

The boat trip between Wales or Nome and Diomede can be treacherous.

With no passenger helicopter service last August, teachers hitched a ride on [a] crab boat ... from Nome to Little Diomede. Rough weather made the trip anything but easy, keeping the school's teaching staff onboard for approximately 30 hours before making it to shore. Much of that time was spent anchored just offshore from the island. With no large boat dock and rough seas preventing a landing, the teachers ultimately had to unload their wares, and themselves, into a small skiff piloted by village residents to finally get to shore.

Last summer's crisis was temporarily resolved with the completion of the ice airstrip. Meanwhile, efforts at getting reliable passenger service to the island have been bogged down in bureaucratic red tape, The Nugget reports.