Alaska Beat

$75 million airport for Akutan

According to KUCB-Radio (Unalaska, via APRN), the Department of Transportation is planning to build a $75 million airport project by 2012 to serve the Aleutian community of Akutan and the second-largest seafood processing plant in Alaska. The airport will be built on a neighboring island, and be connected to Akutan by hovercraft. The village is currently being served by amphibious Grumman Goose flights from PenAir, but maintaining the WW II-era plane is expensive, and PenAir has warned for years that the flights to Akutan were likely to end in the near future. Listen to more here. KSRM-Radio (Kenai) reported on this news earlier this week, and its story includes significantly more detail, including a host of numbers, such as what proportion of the price tag will be paid by federal and state governments and the owners of the seafood plant. Read that report here.

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