Business View Magazine | June 2019

186 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JUNE 2019 fuel capacities, meaning that any aircraft can depart Lincoln and travel to most anywhere in the world without having to stop in transit,” he posits. In the commercial realm, Haring says that Lincoln has some nearby competition. “We lose about 70 percent of our potential market to Omaha,” he notes. “It’s located about 60-70 miles away from us. We lose a very small fraction of our potential market to Kansas City, but that’s a much farther drive – about three-and-a-half hours from here. So, those are really the two primary commercial competitors. Their primary advantage is volume – they’re quite a bit bigger than we are. However, while they have that competitive advantage, I would argue that our size gives us an advantage for people who enjoy flying out of here by virtue of the fact that security lines aren’t as long, parking is a little more reasonable, etc., etc.” “From a general aviation perspective, that busy airspace activity really kind of hurts them,” McNally adds. “We definitely have an advantage getting in and out of the field. A lot of transient, corporate aircraft will prefer to stop here, rather than sequence in and out of Omaha.” Lincoln Airport is a self-sufficient operation, with about half of its revenue coming from its tenants on the thousand-acre industrial park on the west side of the airfield, including approximately 400 acres which are accessible to both the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Railroads. “I’ve been here almost five years now,” Haring recounts, “and the Airport did a lot of growth in the industrial park right as I came – several large, build-to-suit projects. The biggest one was a 173,000-sq.ft. manufacturing facility; about a $15.5 million project. That was a partnership effort among the Airport and the City, economic development, and the Chamber of Commerce. However, one of the side impacts of growth like that is that you take on debt. We took a lot of it on during that growth phase so we are now at a point where we want that growth to stabilize a little bit before we do any more. So, we’re looking at alternatives at how we can continue to see the park develop. One of the development options that we have spent considerable time researching