The Cavern City Air Terminal

two daily flights to Albuquerque and one to Dallas/ Ft.Worth.They’re looking at maybe one more route to Dallas.They’ve grown really big and they’re try- ing to keep up with their growth.” Cavern City also is a general aviation airport and, today, 21 GA aircraft are based there.The only business on the grounds is the FBO, Chandler Avia- tion (no relation).“They sell fuel; they lease out the hangars; they have a pre-flight planning room, a kitchen,TVs, and rest areas,”Chandler notes.“Doug and Terry Chandler have put a lot of their own money into the Airport.They built this 35,000-sq.- ft. FBO and made updates in terms of a brand new fuel farm, a brand new self-serve station, and they refurbished all the ground hangars. Every one of the hangar spaces are taken at this time.” In addition to the scheduled commercial flights at Cavern City, Chandler says that the main influx of air traffic, currently, is corporate aircraft.“We’re a booming community due to the oil and gas industry, plus we have some other industries in Carlsbad; we have the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (the nation’s only deep geologic long-lived radioactive waste repository. Located 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad, NewMexico,WIPP permanently isolates defense- generated transuranic (TRU) waste 2,150 feet underground in an ancient salt formation, and also potash mining, so we get a lot of corporate aircraft in here at this Airport.” Regarding Airport maintenance, Chandler relates that she will be overseeing a new project come the first of the year.“We have an intersection on our air- field that has two runways and a taxiway that inter- sect, and the FAA is focusing on airports that have a similar situation,” she explains.“They’re funding us to remove the taxiway out of that intersection and that’s going to be a $1.9 million project starting off, and the following year,we’re going to need an additional $850,000 to complete the project.They weren’t able to give us enough money to do it all in FLY FROM CARLSBAD, NM TO ALBUQUERQUE, NM AND DALLAS/FORT WORTH, TX YOUR NEXT ADVENTURE AWAITS FREE PARKING NO BAGGAGE FEES, NO CHANGE FEES, NO HASSLE www.boutiqueair.com | 855-268-8478 FARES AS LOWAS 69 $ ABQ-CNM