This paper examines the role of aviation in general and regional airports in particular for societal resilience and future development in geographical peripheral and sparsely populated areas. It concentrates on a Swedish case study that shows that the official Swedish transportation policy conveys a strong focus on passenger numbers, which lead to economic challenges for the smaller, regional airports and airlines in running a viable business. In addition, the study emphasizes that these regional airports in addition to other services play an important role for society’s ability to handle medical or traffic accidents, natural hazards like wild-fires, and security-related transports and to establish proper preparedness for ensuring resilience and territorial sovereignty (as required for the NATO membership). Despite of being an important part of a resilient transportation system, the regional airports are a high-cost factor for the Swedish municipalities that run them, while the benefit occurs at the societal level. This problem of the common good – that the costs and benefits are unevenly distributed – brings the risk that municipal operators choose to close the airports, which considerably affects societal resilience in rather remote and rural areas. Insights from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic indicate that rescaling is a very difficult endeavor if robust maintenance has been neglected in times with low traffic volumes in addition to societal adaption. Future research could address how costs and responsibilities could be more evenly distributed to strengthen societal resilience in sparsely inhabited and geographical remote areas.