Business View Magazine | March 2019

68 T he Columbus Airport is a public use airport located three miles northeast of the central business district of Columbus, a city in Muscogee County, Georgia. Owned by the Columbus Airport Com- mission, and serving Georgia's third largest city, it is the state’s fourth busiest airport, with general aviation and corporate traffic, and one commercial carrier - Delta Connection/Express- Jet - that provides passenger routes to Atlanta. The airport covers an area of 680 acres and has two asphalt paved runways, the longest of which is approximately 7,000 feet. “The facility opened on August 1, 1944,” says Amber Clark, Airport Director and FBO Man- ager. “That’s when Eastern Airlines decided to add our city as a stop between Atlanta and Montgomery, Alabama. The inspiration behind our original service was a flight by Amelia Earhart, back in 1931, when she was doing her nationwide tour of Women in Aviation, and in- cluded a stop here in Columbus. Unscheduled mail flights were regularly occurring in 1936, which led to scheduled mail flights in 1937. That began a big campaign in the community as we realized we had a demand for air service