Runway expansion could mean more business for Macon airport

MACON, Ga. — Massive modifications and bigger planes are coming to the Middle Ga Regional Airport.

A federal grant is paving the way for a runway enlargement that could imply a enhance for airport enterprise.

Massive points are in shop for the airport, which includes a 700-foot runway enlargement that could necessarily mean extra flights, but the most significant point county leaders are fired up for is development for businesses all over the airport.

Previous 7 days, Macon-Bibb commissioners recognized a $2 million federal grant kickstarting the project. They intention to extend the airport’s runway from 6,400 ft to 7,100 ft.

“It really is likely to help us entice extra business and it is really likely to assistance us guidance the companies that are by now listed here,” claimed interim airport supervisor Doug Faour.

The bigger runway would permit larger airplanes to land, but it is not always for passenger travel.

Faour suggests they’re attempting to set up the airport as a maintenance hub. They have various organizations on site that operate on distinct elements of planes, giving them an advantage.

“That is saving the provider from paying added service fees and flying the plane someplace else to get painted, and then traveling it back again to get it again in support, so here, it truly is a one particular-prevent shop,” Faour stated.

That will save time, gas, and cash for the carriers, a thing Faour hopes will trickle down to buyers.

“The much more efficiently and competently they can do some thing, the additional worthwhile they are, and the better bargains that they can perhaps give to their passengers,” explained Faour.

They hope to have section a single of the development completed by summer 2023. The total value of the runway growth is somewhere all over $15 million.

Faour suggests the airport’s most important precedence is routine maintenance, but you can continue to fly out from there. There are a pair flights out each and every working day in between Central Ga and Baltimore.