The Lumberton Regional Airport

Talbert & Bright Aviation Consultants 910.763.5350 / tbiilm@tbiilm.com Dedicated Airport Planning and Design Professionals project matching funds, the split is 50/50. Every year, the Airport also gets its FAA grant money through the State of North Carolina’s block grant program in which the state divides the FAA funds for different projects at different airports. The Airport’s most recent projects included the addition of LED lighting, and a ramp and taxiway project that increased the ramp’s weight capacity to equal that of the main runway’s. “About ten years ago, they reinforced the runway; we had some issues where we would find holes,” Gammon recounts. “They did a study with ground penetrating radar across the entire length of the runway and found that we had all these voids underneath the runway. When the War Department originally built it, all they did was knock down the trees, lay down gravel, and put asphalt over the top. Well, all those trees started to deteriorate and rot, creating the voids. So in 2007- 08, they used injection foam molding – one of the first times they ever tried it – and filled all these voids. Recently, the same company came out to do a follow-up, and all of the foam is still in place and still supporting the runway. So, we alleviated what could have been a major problem by doing the injection foam and increasing the capacity of the runway.” Gammon adds that the Airport is currently in the process of working out its ongoing ALP or Airport Layout Plan. “One of the things we’re looking at is expanding our 5,500ft runway to 6,500 or 7,000 feet to accommodate larger aircraft, and replacing a lot of the old infrastructure,” he relates. “The original FBO building was built in 1952; we’re looking at a project to tear that building down in order to build a new maintenance facility for somebody who would want to do maintenance at the Airport. We’re also looking at replacing some of the old, open T-hangars with newer, box-style, nested T-hangars. And we want to redo the ILS. Right now, our Instrument Landing System is set up with an outer marker and middle marker. We’re looking at changing that to DME.” (DME, or Distance Measuring Equipment, is a measuring device using ground and air components to determine the slant range of an aircraft to a point.).