CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s busiest airport is already making plans for its 80th anniversary next year.
The West Virginia International Yeager Airport began offering flights in late 1947, three years after ground was broken on the then-Kanawha Airport. The airport board has its eye on something special to commemorate eight decades of flight.
Yeager Airport Director and CEO Dominique Ranieri presented a special logo to the board during its Wednesday morning.
“We unveiled our special 80th anniversary logo that you’ll see at the airport and on our marketing materials starting in January,” Ranieri said. “It seems that we’re starting very early, but that’s because we want to plan a lot of exciting things to celebrate 80 years of this facility.”
The airport is also looking to hold a special event later next year, potentially in October, that would serve as a fundraiser for an ‘arts in the airport’ program. Ranieri said that program will instill the community into the airport through artwork, particularly important as construction work continues in several different areas.
“It’s something that we’ve been focused on as we renovate this building and add on to it,” Ranieri explained. “We really want to bring in local art to CRW so that everyone coming in and out of our airport can see what talented people we have in our state. What better way to celebrate, but to start something new, to add to the airport itself?”
Ranieri said they’re forming a planning committee to help with preparations for that event.
Flooding assessments
The airport wasn’t spared from the severe weather on August 16 as it rolled through the Kanawha Valley. Ranieri said that the electrical activity, through lightning, impacted much of the technology at Yeager. They’ve been evaluating the storm’s impacts before moving forward.
“We are almost complete in our full damage assessment, and then we will determine whether or not we want to move forward with an insurance claim or if that’s something that we’re going to be able to handle repairs, just from our operating revenue,” Ranieri said. “But we have been able to fix all of the physical impacts, and it’s just those behind-the-scenes technological impacts of ordering new parts, ordering different things to get everything fully back up and running.”
Girls in Aviation Day
CRW recently hosted a Girls in Aviation Day at the Marshall University Bill Noe Flight School to highlight careers in the industry. Ranieri reported that more than 500 people attended the event to learn about how an airport runs.
“It’s incredibly important to show all of these young people that, if you have even just a little interest that you thought had nothing to do with aviation or airports, you can find a way to do it at an airport,” Ranieri said. “There’s always going to be an opportunity for them.”
Around 20 vendors were on hand to showcase the range of careers. Ranieri said it’s important to let the youth know.
“We’re really working on building that career pipeline from a young age,” Ranieri said. “Really showing how even working in one side of the airport can very easily change into an airline job or an FAA job or something else.”
Electric aircraft charger
Airport officials will unveil a brand-new electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) charger with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on October 9 near the Bill Noe Flight School. Ranieri called electric aircraft the “future of aviation” and this charger will support that. Made possible through a $327,500 project, the charger will support other eVTOL companies, not just BETA, Ranieri noted.
“It’s kind of like a Tesla charger,” Ranieri said. “If you have a different electronic vehicle, you can charge those at those Tesla chargers as well. Same thing for this, different aircraft can come in and charge off of it.”
Board approvals
The airport board approved the receipt of a $100,000 grant from the federal department of Homeland Security to upgrade the facility’s computer network and video surveillance. That grant, along with roughly $5,000 from the airport, will go to Vitis, the contracted IT support company for Yeager. The company will improve the airport’s servers. Board members noted that while most of the operations have gone digitally, into the ‘cloud,’ some systems remain on servers.
The board signed off on $139,000, also toward Vitis, to expand their computer network to the in-progress Snow Removal Equipment (SRE) building.
Meanwhile, $625,000 is going toward revitalizing the airport’s Rental Car Quick Turnaround Facility, where vehicles go before and after they are rented. The project is estimated to take 21 months. The new facility is to support a 60-percent increase in rental car days over the last four years.