"The Grass at Airports," by Fabio Morabito
Briefly

Grass at airports is essential for safety, as it stabilizes air currents and prevents bird activity that could endanger flights. Unlike traditional grass in parks, airport grass is unencumbered by trees and flowers, which attract birds and insects. The grass is maintained by professionals, including those with specialized gardening skills, who appreciate its uniqueness. While passengers often overlook it during their journeys, the grass serves a vital function in aviation, providing a flat, inhospitable surface for birds while enhancing overall flight ground conditions.
At airports, grass is the star, because there can be no bushes or trees, which attract birds, and no flowers either, because they attract too many bugs.
Grass helps to stabilize air currents, untangling knots and wind vectoring that, when formed a few feet above the ground, can pose one of the greatest dangers to landing planes.
Someone like me, a qualified gardener who had studied in France for three years, would be willing to tend the grass at an airport.
Who's going to notice the grass on either side of the runway? The same thing happens before takeoff, as the plane builds up speed and we anxiously wait.
Read at The New Yorker
[
|
]