Proposed expansions on the horizon for airport; flight school also opens

By Billy Longino

DFP Staff

The Angelina County Airport has served the county for many years and by the looks of things it, appears it will serve it for many more years to come. With an increased economic contribution to the area the Angelina County Airport will expand in a number of ways to better serve Angelina County.

Airport manager Randy Carswell pointed out a number of improvements that will be made to the airport in the coming years that will greatly benefit the facility and businesses in the surrounding area. Such improvements include overlaying one runway for better safety and prolonged usage, rebuilding one taxi way, replacing asphalt with concrete and building an agricultural operations pad for agricultural aircraft from the surrounding area to operate from.

Carswell said, “Other plans are still in the design stage with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDot) and include the extension of one of the airport's runways. The extension would allow for safer landings and takeoffs of planes that currently use the airport and allow them to work more efficiently by carrying more passengers and being able to retain full fueling capacity.”

The extended runway may also allow larger aircraft to use the airport and give large businesses more incentive to visit the Angelina County area and extend their services into the area. The economic impact of such small improvements may indeed exponentially exceed the cost of the improvements.

Carswell said that before these plans go through that additional hangers would be built before the extension. One private investment company is already looking into building new private hangers at the airport for future needs.

One reason for the extension Carswell said was so that aircraft would have a balanced field length and that take off and landing would be much safer in case of emergency circumstances that could arise. This extension would also allow for corporate aircraft that ca no currently operate at the airport the opportunity to. Three such companies have already begun plans to build hangers at the airport including a flight and maintenance school that is already operating at the airport.

Maximum Aviations Inc. has been operating out of Nacogdoches for four years and has in the past two months extended operations to Angelina County. Wendell Billit of Maximum Aviations shared information that the flight and maintenance school was in talks with Angelina College to begin an A and P program that would allow students to earn a degree in flight maintenance.

Billit spoke at length on how he believed that his part in the airport expansion would greatly benefit the surrounding communities' economy beginning with the cooperation with Angelina College. He says that he has been in discussions with AC for eight months and has completed a syllabus and believes that what he has planned “will exceed their expectations”.