Business View Magazine - May 2024

to do in the local community without having to fly 45 minutes away into Indianapolis International. They come here, 10 minutes down the road, and they can be where they need to be.” While the airport isn’t actively seeking additional aviation-related ventures, it remains open to leasing opportunities for corporate development and private hangar construction. “We have an area on the western side of the airport that we reserve for corporate development,” Sachs discloses. “We built an additional taxiway with the intent of creating large-scale corporate hangars. We are working with a couple of different people to look at developing that area.” He emphasizes the airport’s continued commitment to accommodating the needs of existing partners who are looking to expand, while actively seeking opportunities to attract new corporate entities. GROWING FOR THE FUTURE The recently completed runway extension was the culmination of 15 years of planning, boosting the runway length to 7001 feet. “That gives us the longest general aviation runway in Central Indiana and one of the longest general aviation runways in the Midwest. The runway is longer than a lot of commercial airports,” touts Sachs. “It’s huge for us and allows us to bring in, essentially, any aircraft we can manage.” The extension also facilitates corporate jets to carry maximum fuel loads, transforming the airport’s capabilities. “The same corporate jets that were flying into and out of the airport before, maybe they couldn’t take as much fuel as they wanted to, to go where they wanted to go,” he says. “But now, you have a Gulfstream or a large Falcon jet or something like that, you can put maximum fuel on there, and take off and go to Europe, or even some of these jets can get from here to Asia.” Recently one of the airport’s Challenger-based jets flew to Iceland, taking full advantage of the long haul flight capability of the new runway extension. 217 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 05 INDIANAPOL IS EXECUT IVE AIRPORT