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Plane fare

At the end of that small runway is often a humble eatery that serves great food.

It's a warm Saturday afternoon, you've just touched down at Beverly Municipal Airport, and you're struck by how few people are around. There's a muffled buzz of a light aircraft circling overhead, the Hood Blimp wobbles in the wind straining to break free of its moorings, and more than two dozen planes of various makes and models line the taxiways between the airport's two runways, which lie about 3 nautical miles from the city of Beverly.

But no people.

Approaching the "terminal," not much more than a weathered wooden house, you pause to investigate a high-pitched sound coming from an old Piper from which the engine cover has been removed. Peering in, you see a small robin's nest with three chicks cheeping for their mother, testimony to the plane's abandonment and another sign that you've landed in a ghost town.

But getting closer still to the terminal, the silence is broken by the faint sound of tinkling silverware, clinking glass, and conversation. Finally, entering the Something Different Restaurant, your questions about where all the people have gone are answered.

The place is packed. Several stressed waitresses are rushing to fill orders ranging from pancakes to cheeseburgers. A kid with a buzz cut and a nose ring is busing tables a little too slowly, judging by his supervisor's expression. An area that's roped off to accommodate two mannequins in WWII aviator garb enjoying a meal looks like it could be put to good use now. And everywhere, real pilots, would-be pilots, and hangar jockeys sitting beneath tacky model planes suspended from the ceiling on thin wire are talking about their latest cross-country flight, their skillful landings, and that new Cessna they'd like to buy.

"Pretty busy today," you offer to the nearest waitress, who rolls her eyes and replies: "You should have been here an hour ago. Come to think of it, you're lucky you weren't."

It's not the first time you've witnessed a scene like this. While independently owned and operated roadside diners are disappearing, you've come to realize there's a thriving niche economy in airport cafes, little hash-and-egg places at airstrips from Sanford, Maine, to Martha's Vineyard. With names like The Lunch Pad, Cockpit Cafe, Plane Jane's, and every combination of air currents - Crosswinds, Tailwinds, Headwinds, etc. - the airport diner is seemingly a growth industry. And no one can explain just why.

The number of licensed pilots has actually gone down in recent years, according to the Federal Aviation Administration - although sales of new single-engine planes have taken off. Small airports like Beverly's, which are under threat from low use, high regulation, and increasing complaints about noise from nearby residents, closed at the rate of about one a week over the last 10 years. That trend has slowed recently - with just 24 general aviation airports closing in 1998 - giving hope to aviation enthusiasts that both the airports and airport diners will survive.

"We've been here for 17 years, and we're open every day except Christmas and Thanksgiving," says Gene Collette, the manager of Gene Collette's Airport Restaurant at the Fitchburg Municipal Airport. "No, wait, we were open on Thanksgiving last year. It's Memorial Day we're closed."

Four years ago, Nancy McPherson, whose husband has owned and operated Minute Man Air Field in Stow for about 30 years, reopened the Air Field Cafe there just off runway three after it had gone through six successive operators and as many failures. Now there can be an hour or more wait for breakfast on Sundays, and McPherson has expanded the 40-seat cafe to accommodate about 70 diners at one time, adding a glassed-in porch facing the runway, an art gallery, and one of the most eclectic menus around. In a typical weekend, McPherson says, she'll serve more than 500 diners, a remarkable feat since the cafe is hardly on the beaten path. "You don't trip over us," McPherson says, in between preparing another lamb burger and stuffed portobello cap. "People come here because they want to."

After managing the restaurant for about 10 years, when it was barely more than "a few stools and a griddle," McPherson closed it in 1987 and then leased the space to other restaurants during the intervening years - a sub shop, a luncheonette, etc. - but none could make a go of it. Now, under her management, it's suddenly thriving. "We market to two kinds of customers," she says. "Local business people, who keep us alive during the week. And local residents, who keep us going on weekends. The fact that it's next to an airstrip provides entertainment and to some extent an education for people who are interested in flying."

What percentage of customers are pilots or airplane enthusiasts is hard to tell, but McPherson guesses it's no more than 5 percent. Still, on a recent day, about half of the 25 diners sitting in the restaurant's new section were fliers, with some having landed there just for the food and fuel. "If we had to depend on pilots," McPherson says, "we wouldn't stay in business very long."

Whatever the formula, it appears to be working. McPherson and her husband, Don, are planning their second major expansion in as many years.

At Sanford's Cockpit Cafe, there was a 20-minute wait on a recent Sunday, unless diners wanted to squeeze in at the counter. One of the oldest airport diners, the cafe features old-fashioned pancakes and hearty egg-and-bacon breakfasts and sandwich lunches, and delicious homemade pies.

In Jaffrey, New Hampshire, the attraction is Kimball's Farms, an extremely popular diner just off the end of Silver Ranch Airport's runway 34. Kimball's is a clam shack on steroids, famous for its signature lobster roll (a mountainous serving of real lobster meat for under $10) and 40 flavors of homemade ice cream (you've got your standard chocolate but also "cherry vanilla chip" and "mocha assault").

Jaffrey is an attractive town in the shadow of Mount Monadnock, but there are not many reasons why a pilot would choose to navigate its tricky 50-foot-wide runway - it is situated on a slight incline - other than to feast at Kimball's.

Nobody really keeps statistics on airport diners, but John Purner, author of The $100 Hamburger: A Guide to Pilots' Favorite Fly-In Restaurants, has been cataloging the ups and downs of the industry since 1996. "When I started, I had the definite sense that it was an endangered species," says Purner, who also operates a Web site, www.100dollarhamburger.com, that updates pilots with the latest information and critiques of hundreds of airport diners across the country. "Since then, we've noticed that the ball hit the floor and it's bouncing back."

On his Web site, which gets more than 300,000 visits a month, Purner keeps track of the diners that have gone out of business, attaching a red universal "closed" symbol next to their names.

"In 1996 and 1997, those closed symbols were being tacked on every day," he says. "Now, we're seeing some of those reopened. In fact, we're getting more reopenings than closings now. I can't remember the last closing we had. Maybe it was six months ago."

Government figures on small airports confirm the trend. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, an industry lobbying group, the number of small general aviation airports went from a peak of about 7,000 in the 1960s to about 5,300 at the end of 1998. However, the rate at which airports are going out of business has dramatically slowed in the last two years.

"The number of people traveling on the airlines is expected to double by 2010," says the lobbying group's Warren Morningstar. "The demand for runway space is going to go way up, and some of that demand is going to be met by the small airports."

Restaurants, Morningstar says, can flourish near an airport but usually only when they get support from the surrounding community, something that the airports themselves often lack. "Pilots like the restaurants, and some are better than others," he says, "but none of them are going to survive unless they're adopted by the community."

Fitchburg's Airport Restaurant is dependent on customers from the nearby industrial park. The Cockpit Cafe is the only restaurant in the area that advertises home cooking. The Basin Harbor Club in Vergennes, Vermont, features beautiful views of Lake Champlain and close proximity to a grass airstrip but wouldn't be in business without the vacationers who frequent the nearby hotels and golf courses.

Part of McPherson's secret in Stow is to feature locally grown and raised produce and meats at her cafe, which ensures a special connection between the restaurant and the nearby community. She also allows local artists to hang their creations on the walls of her restaurant: "I like that better than filling the place with tacky aviation memorabilia."

While the majority of the airport restaurants are independently owned, their popularity hasn't been entirely lost on the corporate chains. Specialty Restaurants Inc. of Anaheim, California, operates a franchise of aviation-themed restaurants called The 94th Aero Squadron at 16 airports throughout the United States. Built to look like World War II-era French farmhouses, each one has displays of vintage aircraft, views of the airports, waitresses dressed as Red Cross nurses, and headphone jacks available for patrons who want to listen to air-to-ground transmissions. Depending on one's tackiness threshold, these restaurants can be fun (reviews on 100dollarhamburger.com are decidedly mixed).

The 94th Aero Squadron in College Park, Maryland, sits just off a 2,600-foot-long runway and benefits from an attractive aviation museum next door. College Park's is the oldest continuously operated airstrip in the world and is where Orville and Wilbur Wright first taught military officers how to fly.

The French farmhouse motif is carried out to exacting detail, giving the restaurant a theme-park feel. But the fare is more franchise than francaise. Still, the place is nearly always busy and is frequently rented out for events such as wedding receptions, class reunions, and business meetings. A list of the corporation's other restaurants across the country is printed on the back of every menu.

It's a far cry from the Kimball's experience in Jaffrey. There, visiting pilots are met by Harvey Sawyer, whose first words after directing your plane to a berth are usually: "Are you here for Kimball's?" He then points aviators toward the painted ice cream cones in the pavement that lead to the restaurant.

Pilots call these places "$100 hamburger joints" because when you include the cost of aviation fuel and other expenses, the tab could easily total that much. Still, sitting under a warm sun watching planes soar off the Silver Ranch runway and surrounded by hikers, bikers, and the biggest lobster roll you've ever seen, it can seem like a bargain.