BECKLEY, W.Va. — Located only six nautical miles from the Bechtel Summit High Adventure Camp, the Raleigh County airport is a handy piece of property for organizers of the Boy Scout Jamboree.
“It’s going to be very busy and its exciting to have this happen in our area,” said Raleigh County Memorial Airport Director Tom Cochran.
Cochran said they have already received confirmation some of the scouts and their leaders will fly into Beckley to attend the event. Most of those will be coming from Washington’s Dulles International Airport. He said they expect they’ll have others arriving via private aircraft and possibly on charter flights.
“It’s not just the Boy Scouts themselves,” Cochran said. “We’ve had a lot of traffic and a lot of people involved in support of the scouts like the Volunteers. There’s going to be roughly 8,000 of them.”
Furthermore the airport is now a staging area for the West Virginia Army National Guard’s Parkersburg based medical aviation units. Five Blackhawk helicopters will be on the runway and prepared for any emergency should they be needed.
Beyond staging grounds and receiving the airport will also become a parking lot for some of the larger vehicles involved in transporting scouts on sight.
“We have a couple of extra acres here we’re going to be parking some of the tour buses who are bringing the scouts by bus.” Cochran explained.
Cochran said he expects it to be a busy week, but added it is good to see activity and excitement around the community.
“We’re all about transportation and we’re all about supporting them in whatever they need,”