GA Traffic Pours Into Nantucket For The Fourth Of July Holiday

With airlines struggling to keep up with demand, general aviation is often the best way to beat the crowds. The vacation island of Nantucket, off the south coast of Massachusetts, saw record numbers of GA aircraft arriving at its airport for the holiday weekend. According to the online news source Nantucket Current, Nantucket Memorial Airport management temporarily shut down the transient GA ramp, restricting operations to “drop and go” arrivals.

Airport manager Noah Karberg said, “What we had on Friday and Saturday was a lot of arrival traffic, and it was probably the busiest 24-hour arrival period that we’ve ever had. The thing that took me aback is typically people arrive in the lead-up to the Fourth of July in a two or three-day period. The difference this year was that everyone really showed up all at once.”

According to Karberg, the airport pumped 27,000 gallons of Jet A fuel on Friday (June 30). He said, “The fuel sales we had on Friday are usually what happens right after a festival weekend when everyone is leaving at the same time and not just an outbound day but an outbound day which is IFR—meaning low visibility, foggy conditions where people are taking on extra fuel before departing. So we closed our Southwest ramp, or our transient ramp, to everyone except Medflights or scheduled quick turns. We would let people in and they could drop passengers off but then they would have to go and stage somewhere else. It is definitely not common. It is a tool for managing capacity.”

Karberg said the restrictions, issued as a Notam, would likely continue, on and off as needed, "until July 10 or July 11." He said this will be an attempt to stay ahead of any major rushes that could become disruptive as the airport works its way through a summer that has been busier than expected so far.

“Summer has taken off,” Karberg said. “[In early June] we went from being 5 to 10 percent below last year to being a couple of percentage points above where we were last year. So, it was an extremely busy last 10 days or so of June.”