Business View Magazine | December 2018

136 137 DOTHAN REGIONAL AIRPORT L. Napier of Union Springs, Alabama, who died in an airplane crash in 1923. It was part of President Roosevelt’s program to try to build airfields and increase the size of the Army Air Corps, knowing that we would eventual- ly wind up in the conflict. It opened prior to Pearl Harbor, but really cranked up afterwards.” In addition to training U.S. pilots, during the war, pilots from Great Britain’s Royal Air Force, as well as officers from the Mexican Army, were trained in AT-6 Texans and P-40s. “After World War II, the airfield was given back to the City of Dothan and Houston Coun- ty,” Morris continues. “It sat here for awhile, because the City of Dothan had its own mu- nicipal airport that had opened in 1940. It was served, initially, by Eastern Airlines, and then by Southern Airways, but it had very short runways. In the early 1960s, Southern told the City that is was going to be acquiring jets and was going to need longer runways. So, the Airport moved out to what was Napier Field. They got various bond issues and borrowed money and built the terminal building and the FBO. There was already some infrastructure on the Airport left over from WWII, which a company called Hayes International, an MRO operation, was using– they were doing work on military aircraft at the time for Army, Navy, and Air Force. Runways were lengthened, infrastructure was improved, and the Airport opened for business as a commercial service airport on Feb. 14, 1965. At that time, the old airport in Dothan was closed.” The Airport has grown steadily since then, Morris reports. “On occasion, we’ve had two fixed-base operators here; one of them, Ae- ro-One Aviation, bought out the other one. The MRO operation has changed hands sever- al times. Currently, we have a company called Commercial Jet Services that occupies that space, which has expanded over the years, as well. Flight Safety International came to the Airport in 1986, with a contract to train Army fixed-wing aviators. They operated here until two years ago. CAE bid on the Army’s contract and took it over and also built some addition- al facilities at the Airport, including a state- of-the-art training center with full-motion simulators and state-of-the-art classrooms. We’ve got some general aviation maintenance operations on the Airport in addition to the MRO and a few private hangars. All of the T-hangars and GA aircraft storage is leased to our FBO and they turn around and sublet to individual tenants.” Dothan Airport is completely self-sustaining. “We don’t use any local tax dollars for operations,” says Morris. “Our money makers on the Airport are general aviation, industrial activities, and military training, so that’s what pays the bills.We’re able to generate enough revenue to pay all of our own expenses and then have some left over that is put in capital development funds for reinvestment into infrastructure.We have about 30 Airport Au- thority employees, and there are probably about five or six hundred employees at the Airport who work for individual tenants.We’ve got TSA here; there’s a restaurant inside the Airport; I’ve got three car rental agencies and a gift shop. The FBO has a terminal and we’ve got about 90 based GA aircraft.We’re currently served by Delta Airlines through Skywest. Total operations a year vary between 80 and 90 thousand.” Morris adds that there is currently a waiting list for hangars and that GA tenants work directly with the FBO, which leases property from the Air- port. “There are exceptions to that, though,” he ex- plains. “We do have some corporate hangars that we lease directly to corporate tenants. If someone says, ‘I want to base a Citation or a Hawker jet or a Gulfstream, and I need a larger hangar and I’d like to lease directly from you,’ we would enter- tain the idea of allowing them to do that and then giving them a long-term lease. At the end of the lease, the hangar is going to belong to the Airport, again, but during the term of the lease, it would just be a land lease to the company. So, we do that, but that is the minority of my hangar business. The majority is leased directly to the