Business View Magazine | March 2020

218 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MARCH 2020 YeagerAirport Marshall University Bill Noe Flight School Starting Fall 2021 Marshall University One John Marshall Drive Huntington, West Virginia 25755 marshall.edu WEARE proudtopartnerwith Having lower fuel prices, according to Keller, helps make Yeager more attractive to the corporate jet and general aviation traffic it wants to attract. “We want to be a mecca for general aviation, so that’s one of the reasons we took over the FBO. And we’ve got professional employees who are dedicated to customer service. It takes 400 hours for a line service technician to get through the NATA Safety First and NATA Customer Service training. Epic Fuels, our vendor, provides some training, as well, so we’ve really spent a lot of time and money upgrading the facility.” Regarding commercial traffic, Keller says that even though Yeager is the largest airport in West Virginia, with the most air service, it does leak about 20 percent of its commercial passenger traffic to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Columbus, all of which are about three to four hours away. “So, we get a bit of leakage,” he admits, “but, overall, it’s not very much.” As is the case with all airports, there is a wide range of construction and rehabilitation projects just completed, ongoing, and planned at Yeager. “There has been about $30 million worth of construction in the last three years,” Keller reports. “We have a major runway safety project that cost $24 million that just finished last August. We received a $3.4 million FAA grant, last year, for the construction of an access road to general aviation. We used to have a crosswind runway; that was closed down in 2012 for various reasons. The runway became a taxiway. We have about 25 acres of land that aren’t being utilized, so we thought if we can put a road to extend general aviation out, the road opens up those acres. “Right now, we’re doing a drainage improvement project – that’s a $2.3 million AIP (Airport Improvement Program) project to repair some drainage around the Airport and also put in a retaining wall in one sector of the runway safety area,” he continues. “Being on top of a mountain in West Virginia, drainage is always something that has to be controlled. We’re also doing a