Saturday, December 26, 2015

Harry Brady talks Norwalk-Huron County Airport (5A1) income, Jet-A fuel future

Harry Brady discussed the current financial status at the Huron County Airport on Thursday.

At a recent airport board meeting, Brady indicated the facility showed a negative net income of about $43,000 for this year.

“Most of that was the grant match, plus a number of maintenance repairs,” he said.

“We had the runway lights repaired and roof-top units repaired,” Brady said. “There were a lot of things we had to repair that were temporary fixes over the years or not repaired at all.”

Brady said, hopefully, many of these were one-time repairs.

“We had a hole in the waterline by the T-hangars,” he said. “We fixed that. We fixed a lot of things that had been let go.”

There are a few ways the airport makes money.

“Those are fuel sales, hangar rent and farm rent,” Brady said.

“Hangar rent, obviously, generates a large amount of income,” he said. “Fuel sales are up and down.

”With the farm rent, hopefully, the commissioners are going to turn over the farm rent because that is a large amount of money,“ Brady said.

Another income source is Summit Motorsports Park, which pays the airport to use the runway as an exit a few times per summer during large race events.

Summit paid the airport $8,000 in 2015 and is set to pay $10,000 in 2016.

Looking back at fuel sales, there has been much discussion lately as to whether the airport should sell Jet-A fuel. 

The airport used to sell Jet-A, but stopped after it had to scrap about 3,000 gallons because it set in the tank for the better part of a year.

The airport still sells 100LL fuel.

Brady said it’s all about supply and demand with the Jet-A fuel.

At the Huron County Airport, many jets can’t completely fill their tanks because they then are  too heavy to take off due to the length of the runway.

Brady said he heard the reports of three or four jets visiting the airport a couple weekends ago.

”If there is a demand, I have no problem with that,“ he said.

“But, I definitely don’t want to get caught with a massive amount of fuel in the ground. Back last year, we sold maybe 800 gallons, but we had 3,800. If we have Jet-A fuel, we need to be able to move it.“

Source:  http://www.norwalkreflector.com

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