Martha’s Vineyard Airport was evacuated and closed for about two hours Sunday after a security threat, airport manager Geoff Freeman said.
Mr. Freeman said at about 12:30 p.m., a “security situation,” involving a departing private aircraft occurred at the Island’s main airport, forcing the airport staff and law enforcement to evacuate the terminal.
As August makes way to September and the Vineyard readies its goodbye to summer, businesses are reporting mixed results even though preliminary data show more traffic on roads, runways and ferries.
Suite Six, a company managed by MV Propane owner John Rymes, is suing the airport commission and other entities, saying poor care of the airport’s asphalt resulted in a plane sustaining nearly $1.5 million in damages after falling into a sinkhole.
Martha’s Vineyard Airport officials voted Thursday to approve a new lease for Animal Health Care Associates, one of the few remaining pet care facilities on the Island.
The airline notified Martha’s Vineyard Airport last week that the flights to and from Westchester County, which ran about once a day in the summer, would be discontinued in 2024, said Geoff Freeman, the airport director.
Eighty years ago, while World War II was raging in Europe, the military carved 683 acres out of the state forest on the Vineyard to create the United States Naval Auxiliary Facility.
An initiative to build a $3.5 million dormitory for summer employees at the airport is at least two years away from completion. Members of a committee looking at the feasibility of a complex said there is much work to do, but support is widespread.
About 64,000 people have taken commercial flights at the airport in the first eight months of 2023 — a figure that is already higher than the total annual commercial passengers for three of the past five years.
