Chattanooga Airport officials are planning projects to help Lovell Field weather future financial storms caused when commercial airline traffic stalls as it has done during the pandemic.
Terry Hart, the airport’s chief executive, said he believes a federal infrastructure bill now under consideration by Congress will include money for airports. He said he wants a list of projects ready to go when the funds are available.
“We need to continue to not rely on commercial service so much,” Hart said, citing sharp drops in revenues over the past two decades due to the pandemic, the Great Recession and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Hart told Airport Authority members that in recent years the airport has grown its non-commercial airline revenue stream. The airport is selling energy from its solar farm to TVA, has boosted its general aviation revenue and leased space to aircraft maintenance company West Star Aviation.
(READ MORE: Planned Chattanooga Airport terminal expansion put at $28 million)
“That’s steady revenue coming in at a difficult time,” Hart said. “We’re anxious to see this grow.”
The airport outlined potential future projects on which it aims to start planning:
– New hangar space on the airport’s west side. Jack McAfee, the airport’s vice president for operations, said there’s a vacant parcel on which a couple of new hangars could be constructed.
– A connector taxiway to help West Star. In 2018, the company that works on smaller aircraft inked a deal with a key jet-maker that has brought more business to Chattanooga and supported its $20 million expansion at the airport.
Hart said the company, which tripled its footprint at the airport by adding 80,000 square feet of hangar space, continues to stay busy even as commercial passenger service has fallen amid the coronavirus.
– Design additional hangars for small planes over 10 years. McAfee said the south end of the airfield could hold as many as 80 hangars for smaller planes, known as T-hangars because of their shape.
“It’s a good move long-term for general aviation,” he said.
Also, airport officials said they want to refurbish the existing 24 T-hangars at Lovell Field. In addition, officials plan to make it easier to use parking space near the terminal, which was made available when the new garage opened this summer.
McAfee said plans are to move employee parking to the site, which formerly held rental cars, and to put commercial service vehicles there such as shuttles, Uber transportation and taxis.
In 2020, Chattanooga Airport posted its worst year for passenger boardings in nearly four decades due to the pandemic.
For the first nine months of this year, boardings are up 64.1%, airport figures show. Hart expects boardings will end 2021 at about 375,000 passengers.
But in 2019, the airport boarded a record 554,050 passengers.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.