Business View Magazine | March 2020

216 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MARCH 2020 PORT INNOVATIVE THINKING Y eager Airport is a commercial, military, and general aviation airport located three miles east of downtown Charleston, in Kanawha County, West Virginia. The Airport sits on a hilltop, over 300 feet above the valleys of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers. It covers 767 acres and has one asphalt runway, 5/23, which is 6,715 X 150 feet. Originally called the Kanawha Airport, the facility opened in 1947. “They had to level three mountaintops and fill the valleys in between to build the Airport,” recounts Airport Director, Nick Keller. “The first tenant was the West Virginia Air National Guard, and then we had commercial air service from American, Capitol, and Eastern; Piedmont came in 1948. We went into the jet age in 1968 with our first jet service from United; then Piedmont and US Air, through the 1980s. Piedmont went away and US Air was the dominant carrier here until 9/11. Today, we have Delta, American, United, and Spirit, with nonstop flights to seven major airports.” In 1985 the Airport was renamed for then- Brigadier General Chuck Yeager, a native of nearby Lincoln County who piloted the world’s first supersonic flight in the Bell X-1. Today, Yeager Airport is owned by the Central West Virginia Regional Airport Authority, which has about 85 full-time and 30 part-time employees. In 2008, Yeager’s Governing Board voted to close the Airport’s secondary Runway 15/33, to allow AT A GLANCE YEAGER AIRPORT WHAT: A commercial, military, and general aviation airport WHERE: Three miles east of downtown Charleston, in Kanawha County, West Virginia WEBSITE: www.yeagerairport.com