Alpena County Airport Reopens Runway

As of right now runway 1/19 and runway 7/25 are now fully renovated and the Alpena County Regional airport is officially reopened. Steve Smigelski the Airport Manager gave all the credit to the contractors on why the airport was able to reopen so soon.

“The contractors they did a fantastic job, even with some of the rain that came they were still able to push through and for the most part keep things on track. And CRTC, you just can’t say enough about their engineer Major Hylko, he did miracles getting the money in one fiscal year to do their project so a lot of back padding to go around for this one.”

These past few weeks gave Steve and the contractors a few headaches as the recent rains threatened to delay the project longer. Steve states, “The problem with the rain is when they’re laying the asphalt they have to make density tests and they test a lot so that MDOT Aeronautics and the FAA know that the job is being done right. So, if you get too much rain what it does is it dilutes the asphalt and they don’t make their density testing so they have to strip it all off again.”

This also contributed to the delays the airport experienced. The runways were expected to be completed by mid–July. However, that was not the case as when they were stripping off the top 7 inches of asphalt at one intersection causing it to buckle and catastrophically fail. This meant Steve had to use some of the CARES Act money he had, Steve added, “So, really it didn’t cost the County anything, so we’re really fortunate about that.”

But I think the biggest question on everyone’s mind is when will the people be able to book flights and start traveling out of Alpena through the airport? Steve eagerly said, “16th of August is when the first flight is scheduled to begin.” He also added, “I’ve already had one lady email me just before we came on, she said she was successful in booking a flight for the 16th, so it’s working.”