Business View Magazine l October 2022

219 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 10 NEWTON C I TY-COUNTY A I RPORT especially pilot training. We need to ramp up our flight schools. There’s probably room not only for the flight school that we do have to expand, but I think there’s room for an additional flight school, as well. Then there are unmanned aircraft systems… so many different agricultural applications for unmanned aircraft systems, and those are being developed every day. At some point, we’re going to have to stop thinking about what we can do with AG and unmanned aircraft systems and start building them. Well, where should we build them? Here at Newton City-County Airport because not only is the labor market here locally – but we’ve got lots of wide-open spaces to test it, so we can support it! I think that’s where we’re going to see the biggest shift.” of Commerce has an annual steak fry and the airport likes to host other community events, as well. For example, the Boy Scouts camp at the airport, taking tours and learning about the operations in order to earn their aviation badge. “I think we’re going to see a big upswing in the number of corporate aircraft that come in here,” says Palmer when asked about the future. “I’m always optimistic that we’ll see charter service because I still think, as a student of the industry for the last 30 years, that we are grossly underserved in regional charter aircraft services, whether it’s on-demand or scheduled charter service. There’s no way to fly from Wichita to Kansas City commercially, for example, so there seems to be a need. That’s one of the things that I hope that we’ll see addressed in the next three to five years. “There’s also a huge demand for education,