On Saturday, the Laurinburg-Maxton Airport will celebrate the
completion of a runway refurbishing project designed to improve the
experience of air traffic landing there.
The airport’s main runway — 5-23 — was refurbished last year in a 120-day project that lasted from June to October.
“It
was ranked the third worst runway of any general aviation airport in
the state,” said Jo Ann Gentry, the airport’s executive director.
“Pilots didn’t want to land there because of the cracking and breaking
of the concrete.”
The airport commission has spent the last
decade patching the runway while trying to secure state funding for a
complete renovation. By rubblizing the runway’s existing concrete,
project cost was cut to a quarter of the $20 million that would have
been spent on entirely new materials.
“We took up the existing
concrete that was there when they built this airport in 1942,” said
Gentry. “Instead of redoing the runway the way it was with 100 percent
concrete, the concrete was broken up and mixed with asphalt.”
The
runway was kept at its original length of nearly 6,500 feet, but
narrowed from 150 to 100 feet. Of the project’s $5 million total cost,
the airport commission was responsible for 10 percent.
The
refurbished runway has received positive reviews from pilots in its
seven months of operation, and is expected to bring increased air
traffic to Laurinburg-Maxton Airport.
“The level of activity or
landings is, I think, a little bit higher than prior to the runway
rehab,” said Randy Hoffman, co-owner of Scotland Aero Services, the
airport’s fixed-base operator. “We certainly expect it to increase; the
more the word gets out that we do have a new runway, we’re confident
that it will increase significantly.”
“Now we don’t have any
problems with any aircraft landing here - pilots are not fearful of
landing on our runway now,” Gentry added. “Everyone who lands here and
takes off says that the runway is 100 percent better.”
The new runway is suitable for landing aircraft significantly larger than it handled prior to the renovation.
“One
of the reasons that we’re confident that the activities will increase
is that the new runway has a landing weight capacity of 256,000 pounds
per tandem axle,” Hoffman said. “Prior to that, it was 60,000. That
enables us to allow much heavier aircraft to land here, particularly
when we’re speaking of the military.”
The airport’s next project
will be a parallel taxiway and hangar redesign currently in a Division
of Aviation-funded planning phase.
“The state’s funding us $382,500 to do a taxiway design, a hangar design, and an airport layout plan update,” Gentry said.
Pending state approval of the designs, construction on these projects is expected to begin this fall.
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