Maine is a great place and if you ask the out of state average Joe or Jane, to describe Maine in one word.
Lobsters, ocean, lighthouses, moose, blueberries, potatoes, Baxter, Acadia, Allagash, Sugarloaf, Sunday River. Whoops, two words for skiing, sorry. Oh, and Moosehead, Sebago, East Grand Lakes. And to be fair rivers like the Penobscot, Dead, Androscoggin and Kennebec.
Sure there are Maine towns and a handful of cities that might come up in conversation.
Visited during vacation, on the way through traveling.
Less commercial, more outdoors and infested with wildlife, sparse numbers of locals.
What to expect to find in small Maine towns, villages, burgs. A friend of my son’s works at a small airport. Has an app on his phone that let’s him know there is a request for a drink. A plane needing lots of fuel that is requesting touch down. Just long enough to make the gauge on the silver bird go back to the right, up on “F”.
Then turn around, after dropping off precious cargo and flapping those wings back to whence it came. Five hundred gallons, times $4.75 makes for one attractive gas stop of higher octane. With more flammable fumes than the Yugo or Rambler in your average small Maine town yard drink. That are used to go to the local IGA Foodliner, to the Blue Seal feed store for pellets of mixed grain, etc.
I really like, get excited helping the flow of new dollars into a small Maine town economy.
And any time someone in my day job asks can I fly into your hometown airport, sure can. May not be a domestic, daily flight schedule you are marching to but with a little lead time, Sky King, Penny can be located to take on the assignment.
Paved runways, mile long can handle the job nicely in say Houlton Maine’s KHUL airport. Earlier today another smaller Cessna drifted in, land for a fill it up please expensive slurp. And then went on it’s merry flight plan way. Local manufacturing factories based here, the US Government, private sector use the small Maine airport too.
Today’s Hawker 800 fuel consumer will be back to pick up a passenger, family member staying until the end of the month.
Flying a Hawker 800 that looks pretty neat, sleek when not the norm where big jet engines row. The airport in Houlton Maine was pretty important, busy during World War Two when barracks were set up. To house NCO and officers but also German prisoner of wars. Who helped local Maine potato farmers plant, tend, harvest the local crops.
While most of local GI’s were across the puddle in the European or further mileage racked up in the Pacific war theatre. My Dad played a part taking rides, working out of the back of a four engine bomber.
So when someone asks can you fly their plane, small jet into some Maine town without a major airport but with a runway all FCC approved for traffic, roll out the red carpet.
If you are lucky enough to have one. Tell them sure thing. Hope they stay awhile, return. Make it a habit.
Help yourself to lower cost jet and airplane fuel. Quick clearing of customs, immigration in the case of Houlton Maine’s airport smack dab on the Canadian border.
Spread the word, small Maine town airports are open for business.
Round the clock, Ready Freddy when needed. Repair work can be done on air frames too, avionics and more if needed. Tell your fly boy friends in your rolodex, business circles would you please?
And put others in the Maine small town community to work. Like a car dealer renting the pilot and crew a vehicle. That end up staying the night or longer at a local Maine motel, cabin, lodging.
And who knows, with the small Maine home town warm reception, an up and coming industry expansion, someone starting a new business that generates jobs could ignite. Could be the low hanging fruit harvested. From sending up the flare to say “Land Here Easy.” Simply playing the local small Maine town airport introduction face card.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com