Business View Magazine | July 2019

131 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 Rocky Mount-Wilson R ocky Mount-Wilson Regional Airport’s history can be traced back nearly a hundred years to the various airports in this region of eastern North Carolina. One of the earliest of these was the Rocky Mount “Eagle” Airport, which was built in 1933 by the Eagle Aircraft Company. That airfield, then, was said to consist of a four-acre rectangular sand and sod field, with hangars and buildings located along the southeast side. The airport was evidently renamed Rocky Mount Municipal Airport at some point in the mid 1930s, and for the next 30 years, it was home to mainly crop-dusters and private aircraft. “So that airport was to the north of where we are today,” explains Dion Viventi, Managing Director for the current facility. “And there was also a City of Wilson Industrial Airport and they were closer than 25 miles apart. So when the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) restricted how many airports were able to be licensed in an area, the North Carolina State Department of Aviation decided to offer both the opportunity to build one single airport between the two, right on the county line between three counties and write a new charter for all three counties and both cities for an Airport Authority. The state bought the property in 1964 Small but mighty