By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
The wait time for pilots taking off from Wood County Regional Airport will be trimmed thanks to a new taxiway planned.
The airport is getting a new $1.3 million taxiway, compliments of the CARES Act. Airport manager Mark Black explained the latest project at the airport recently during a meeting with the Wood County Commissioners.
Normally, the taxiway would be 90% funded by the FAA, with 5% from the state and 5% from the airport. But the CARES Act is allowing complete funding from the FAA, Black said.
The parallel taxiway for the main east-west runway currently doesn’t run the full route, which causes delays for pilots waiting to take off. The new taxiway will cut the waiting times, Black said.
Bowling Green State University student flyers often have to wait 15 to 20 minutes before they can get into the air.
“We’d like to get students in the air longer,” he said. But the waiting time costs money and “bites into their training time.”
The taxiway should be completed sometime in mid-2021
“We’re just waiting for a spring thaw. Once they get going, that will be a 90-day project,” Black said.
The revived aviation program at BGSU has led to an uptick in airport use.
“They do a lot of the flying and buying a lot of fuel,” Black said.
“It’s good to have the university out there,” Wood County Commissioner Doris Herringshaw said.
When BGSU sent students home for a couple months after COVID hit, the airport saw a big drop in flights. However, the number of charter flights at the airport increased during COVID, Black said.
Fuel sales at the airport ended up being down just 3% for 2020.
“When they came back, they came back gangbusters,” Black said.
Next on the list of major projects at the airport is the extension of the shorter runway. The airport has two runways – with the primary one running east-west at a length of 4,200 feet. The secondary one runs north-south and is 2,600 feet long.
Because the north-south runway ends very close to East Poe Road, and because of nearby development of Bowling Green State University, plans are underway to extend that runway another 600 feet to the north.
Plans for that runway extension are 90% complete, Black said. Once the plans are final, the project will be put out for competitive bids. It’s unsure when that project will take place.
Airport officials also hope to someday extend the east-west runway to 5,000 feet.
“We’d like to lengthen that at some point,” Black said.
The longer runway would allow for small two-engine jets to land at the airport. Currently, those small jets can only land if the pilot has additional training and insurance coverage to land on a shorter runway.
Black reported to the commissioners that the FAA is also helping the airport replace its snowplow.
“That will help us out quite a bit,” Black said.
The current snowplow is only 10 years old, with just 20,000 miles. But it has done a lot of heavy pushing to remove snow from the runways and taxiways, Black said.
Also during the meeting, the county commissioners gave the airport operation its annual funding of $30,000.
