Business View Magazine | August 2019

140 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2019 T he Heart of Georgia Regional Airport is located three miles east of Eastman in South Central Georgia, and services general aviation air traffic from all over the southeast United States. The Airport was originally built by the Stuckey’s Corporation to support its own business operations. “Mr. W.S. Stuckey, who started the candy company here in Eastman, Georgia, selling pecan log rolls by the side of the road, kept expanding and started putting stores all up and down the interstate,” explains Airport Manager, Jeff Fordham. “They had a Piper Aztec and their airstrip was not long enough, so they came out here and built the Airport.” When the facility was officially dedicated in December 1966, then Governor Carl Sanders hailed the $232,000 Eastman-Dodge County Airport as “the first community airport in Georgia that we have built specifically to accommodate the modern business jet airplanes that are becoming so important in one industry after another.” Today, the Airport is owned and operated by Heart of Georgia Regional Airport Authority. Its original 4,500-