Thief River Falls Regional Airport

4 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 Thief River Falls, MN is a great destination for your next convention, meeting or sporting event.  Thief River Falls is the hub for northwestern Minnesota for tourism, economic development and transportation.  The Thief River Falls Airport offers easy access from any airport in the nation.  Considering scheduling your upcoming event at any of our numerous locations.  The Ralph Engelstad Arena is a world- class hockey rink that can easily be transformed into a basketball court or large event space.  Add in tours and speakers from DigiKey Electronics, an international electronic component distributor.  Or consider a visit to Arctic Cat, a snowmobile manufacturer that was born in Thief River Falls in 1960.  An event isn’t fun unless you add in a visit to our local microbrew Rivers & Rails Brewing.  Maybe a tour of the Peder Engelstad Pioneer Village to get the historic background of Thief River Falls.  Or enjoy our numerous outdoor activities in every season.  Check out VisitTRF for more information to schedule your next convention, meeting or sporting event. For more information, visit: www.visitTRF.com THIEF RIVER FALLS REGIONAL AIRPORT Minnesota’s Manufacturing Backbone Established in 1945 as a public airport and later becoming an airport authority in 2010, the Thief River Falls Regional Airport has become an integral component of the daily operations of many of Minnesota’s largest companies. The state’s northwest region has an incredibly robust manufacturing and distribution base focusing on–but not limited to–electronics components. Thief River Falls rests comfortably as one of the aviation giants responsible for processing, tracking, and reporting that cargo to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The airport authority is the third largest transporter of cargo in the state. According to Airport Manager Joe Hedrick, not many other airports can handle such dense payloads, saying, “I know of several [distributors] around the state, and they just don’t have near the same amount of cargo going on that we do.” Thief River Falls conducts about five cargo flights daily in their operations. In addition to the feeder planes that fly out daily, its largest two operators are a pair of CRJ-200 aircraft that fly out Monday through Friday toward Louisville, KY, and Memphis, TN, the respective hubs of UPS and FedEx. Each of those planes can hold a payload capacity of approximately 23,300 pounds, so with just those two alone, Thief River Falls can handle the bulk of its cargo demands. That success has allowed the airline to carry out a stable yet substantial twelve round-trip flights per week.