Ann Crook was well aware when she applied for the job of Martha’s Vineyard Airport manager that the county-owned airport was emerging from years of political turmoil, court battles and serious rebukes from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). She might have changed course when presented with those kinds of challenges, but Ms. Crook landed on Martha’s Vineyard last week eager to turn problems into opportunities.

“I like a challenge,” she said this week. “I like to have something to fix.”

Ms. Crook has met a wide variety of challenges in an aviation career that began in Fairbanks, Alaska, and took her through Kansas, Oregon, New York, and now to Martha’s Vineyard. She has worked in a variety of management positions, and pitched in as a flight attendant when needed.

Ms. Crook said she was attracted to the position in part because of the great beaches and natural beauty. She didn’t see much of that when she came to interview in April, her first ever trip to Martha’s Vineyard. But she wasn’t fazed.

“It was freezing,” Ms. Crook said. “The snow was blowing sideways. When I started in aviation, I was in Fairbanks, Alaska, so there’s no way that anybody can tell me the weather here is worse than Fairbanks.”

Most recently she was the director of aviation at Elmira Corning Regional Airport in southwestern New York.

There, she experienced something roughly similar to the seasonal nature of the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, except she had little advance notice. The airport in Elmira sits on the border with Pennsylvania, and atop the Marcellus Shale, an enormous geographic formation that suddenly became the focus of an intense effort to extract crude oil with hydraulic fracturing, a controversial technology often called fracking.

“We started noticing cowboy hats and chewing tobacco,” Ms. Crook said. “We hit the oil boom and then the oil bust. That took us all by surprise. We figured out how to deal with it. It was not something we anticipated or anything anyone warned us about.”

That experience translates to her new job in big and small ways.

“One of our biggest deficits when the boom started, we didn’t have enough public restrooms,” Ms. Crook said. “I’m happy to say I’ve got a lot of experience building bathrooms. I think I’ll be putting that to use here.”

New bathrooms are one of many projects she anticipates adding to her to-do list. “My list is so long, I keep reminding myself I’m going to be here a long time,” she said. “We can take little bites. We don’t have to try and do it all at once.”

She categorizes her priorities in three general areas. First is a broad range of initiatives that will position the airport as an Island resource beyond the aviation world.

“I want the community to know the airport here not so much as transportation infrastructure, but as a tool to assist in the economic vitality of the Island,” she said. “That’s what we do. I want the whole community to be aware of that. Everyone depends on an airport in one way or another.”

A more immediate concern is staffing and the remaining problems detailed by the FAA following an unannounced inspection that resulted in a letter of investigation. “We have a couple of lingering compliance issues. That’s not a hard one. That’s an easy one we’ll be done with pretty quickly.”

Another priority is a new airport master plan, which is years overdue.

“That’s really important because that will look at what improvements we need to make to facilities. That’s going to set the stage for the future of the airport.”

During her 26-year career, Ms. Crook said she has experienced difficult situations as a woman working in an industry that was once almost exclusively male.

“It has been challenging,” she said. “It’s definitely been a part of what I have to deal with. It’s been amazing the changes I’ve seen toward diversity. I’m pretty proud to be one of a growing but still small percentage of women who are airport managers.”

She is looking forward to managing the arrival of dignitaries visiting the Island, including one family that has made a habit of vacationing here.

“I’ve dealt with presidential visits before as an airport manager,” Ms. Crook said. “But it’s not just a campaign stop. They bring a lot of stuff and a lot of people telling me what to do. I’m interested and curious and ready to do that. That’s part of why I thought this was an interesting and unique situation.”

Ms. Crook, will be settling in Oak Bluffs with her dog, a boxer named Aero. She anticipated a certain measure of uneasiness, coming in as a new manager, but said she has been pleasantly surprised.

“The whole community has been really warm and welcoming,” she said. “I was a little bit concerned there would be some angst, but everyone has been really helpful and friendly.”

She added that she wants to get involved with local community groups and airport neighbors as quickly as possible. “I’m very accessible. People should feel comfortable calling or emailing me.”