Leaving aside the jokes, I’ve got some work coming up at an airport with a shortened runway where this same sort of problem can be expected to occur (no prizes for guessing which continent).
I hadn’t given it much thought up until now but this thread has prompted me to look to other, more positive, ways of handling the problem. What about setting up one of the lighting towers, aimed up at aircraft on finals, and having the generator engine ticking over all night, with a worker ready to flick the switch on. At first I was thinking to be sarcastic and say the worker is probably redundant, since it would only need the safety officer (who is always listening out on the radio) to position himself close to the switch when certain airlines approach, but that is nonsense. Genuine mistakes happen and to respected operators. The safety officer and workers genuinely see well beforehand if an aircraft is going to land on them, and they can switch the lights on if it is looking too close. Wouldn’t want too many false alarms though.