Virginia Highlands Airport

V I RGINI A HIGHLANDS A I RPORT become involved in is a scholarship program through the Virginia Airport Operator’s Council and Department of Transportation who offer several scholarships, a teachers’ grant, and an aviation art contest for students. They also run a program where they take an ICON A5 amphibious aircraft to the school and introduce students to aviation and encourage them to consider it as a future career. “We are actively looking at drones as well,” explains Hines. “When we are done our runaway construction, this will be where we focus our development. A lot of companies are using drones for package delivery, or medical delivery, and there is also agricultural use such as spraying and land surveying. We want to look at what we can do to support and perhaps provide these services. There is also a place for electric planes and vertical takeoff aircraft in the future. We are not involved in that directly yet, but it seems to be the future. We currently work with the county industrial development authority and with the state industrial development agency to see about what can be done to promote the airport and perhaps to look at combining and creating regional capacity.” The wish list moving forward includes terminal restoration, updating the fuel farm, new navigational aids, and perhaps even new maintenance equipment. But all in due time. For now, it is onwards and upwards. “We are passionate about what we do,” Hines concludes. “I think these little airports like ours are the jewels all across the country. The big airports do a lot for transportation, but these smaller airports serve the communities in many ways that the larger ones cannot. So, we are proud of what we do and we enjoy our work and we think we are serving the community and the region very well.”