Business View Magazine March 2023

240 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 3 at the airport, and they are busy all day. With jets coming in and out in the morning and in the evening. So, we have a lot of businesses that we see access the community through the airport. We have businesses like Penske, First Energy, Penn National Gaming, Loomis Insurance Company, and Quest Diagnostics flying in and out of our airport regularly. By having those companies come in, we help establish a foothold for them in Berks County, which again makes our community grow and prosper economically.” In terms of recent infrastructure improvement, the airport recently completed a Terminal Apron project, repaving the entire apron. They also put in a concrete parking pad that can hold 737s. Coming up next will be upgrading the airport signage and LED taxiway lighting upgrades. On the economic development side, the AP Development group has come forward with a proposal for a series of 100x100 box hangers. The current plan is for the construction of four hangars capable of holding anything up to a challenger aircraft. Covid and other factors have been leading us to a crisis in terms of the airline industry, a lack of pilots and maintenance workers has been creating a lot of movement in terms of promotion and retention. This seems to be true of airports across the country. “We have had turnover like everybody else,” Tempesco muses, “Currently, we are fully staffed, and we’ll be hiring additional staff just to keep trainees in the pipeline because obviously, we want to make sure that we can stay operational. The airport itself only has eight maintenance people and three administration folks.” “We were well above 50,000 operations before Covid, and we went all the way down to 25,000 operations a year, which we weren’t very happy about. Now we are back up around 38,000 operations a year, and the general aviation itinerant numbers have spiked. When we look at itinerant business traffic alone, we had close to 12,000 before Covid and we are at 22,000 now,” Tempesco points out that another major shift that came about because of Covid was the loss of flight instruction on the field. Before the pandemic, there were two flight schools in Reading. One of which closed right before the onset of restrictions, and one which decided to close. Another school started up in 2021 but failed to make a go of it. He is confident that this situation will correct itself soon as the airport has been approached by interested individuals. “This year we also had our first ever aviation career fair,” Tempesco adds, “The fair kind of stemmed from the acknowledgment of some of those shortages. In October of last year, we brought in some static aircraft displays, we had aviation seminars throughout the day, and we had many exhibitors including four airlines.” Reading Regional Airport Authority is building this event in partnership with Reading Aero Club. “All the military branches were present as well as multiple colleges, including Florida