August/September Business View Magazine

124 125 AT A GLANCE THE COLORADO SPRINGS AIRPORT WHAT: A city-owned, civil-military airport WHERE: Six miles southeast of Colorado Springs, in El Paso County WEBSITE: www.coloradosprings.gov/flycos THE COLORADO SPRINGS AIR­ Airport’s existing three-level, 280,000-square-foot structure, which came in at a cost $140 million. The Colorado Springs Airport has three, 150- foot wide runways, with one at 13,501 feet long, making it one of the longest in the state. Last year, the Airport had 135,178 aircraft operations, an average of 370 per day; 48 percent of those operations were general aviation, 31 percent were military, 11 percent were scheduled com- mercial, and 10 percent were air taxi. As of April, 2018, there were 231 aircraft based at the Air- port: 151 single-engine, 25 multi-engine, 25 jet, 4 helicopter, and 26 military. The Airport is owned by the City of Colorado Springs and, as an “enterprise fund,” receives no appropriations from it. “We live and die on the revenues we make,” says Greg Phillips, Director of Aviation. “We’re always looking at ways we can increase our revenue because the money we spend to operate and improve the Airport comes from the revenue we make.We don’t take a dime in general fund taxes.” While the Airport has several different revenue streams - corporate and general aviation; the Pe- terson Air Force Base, which is its largest tenant; and 900-acre non-aeronautical business park –Colorado Springs is mostly known for its com- mercial service. Carriers serving the Airport over the years included such long-forgotten names as Wyoming Air Express Service, Pikes Peak Air Service, and Western Air Service. In the mid-1990s, the Airport was served by Western Pacific. “Around here, they called it West- Pac,” says Phillips. “It was one of the first low-cost, innovative carriers. It was famous for the paint schemes and livery it had on different aircraft and