Meaning of airport tick marks on sectional charts

Recently I discovered that for a long time, I have been mis-interpreting
one aspect of reading sectional charts.

A few weeks ago, I was preparing for a flight to Shelter Cove on the
coast of Northern California. My planned fuel stop was the Little
River airport in Mendicino (O48 on the San Francisco sectional). I
noticed, however, that the airport symbol for Little River had no tick
marks. Thinking this was an error, I sent an email to NACO suggesting
the correction.

A few days later, I received a nice reply stating that the meaning
of tick marks is not just that the airport has fuel available. It
must have fuel AND be attended at least Monday through Friday, 10am
to 4pm local. Since Little River is not attended on Tuesdays and
Wednesdays, it doesn't get tick marks.

I suppose in days before the proliferation of self-serve fuel pumps,
the attendence requirement made sense. In order to get the fuel, you
had to have someone pump it for you, and more importantly, collect
the $$$. But now, I suspect many possible fuel stops might be missed
by only a casual survey of the chart for airports with tick marks,
especially if certain airports decide to forgo some weekday coverage in
order to cover the busier weekends.

Little River is the only airport I've found like this so far. Are
there many others? Would it be more beneficial to remove the attendence
requirement for tick marks?


Happy landings,
Ross Oliver