Basking in the warm breezes of Wisconsin’s first coat-free day of spring, I suffered a pang of aviation desire. It would be a nice day for any general aviation pilot to go flying. But in the hemisphere that surrounds my deck the only sights and sounds of flight were the robins feasting on sunbathing worms. This brought to mind all of the empty airports I visited last year on my Route 66 adventure, and for the first time I made a connection between them and the empty, boarded-up building on the Main Streets of their respective home towns. Like many, I have nostalgic memories for both, but one cannot exist without the other, and the revitalization of either seems slim these days.
Looking forward, I wonder for how much longer these forlorn airports will survive? If the small town doesn’t have the population and jobs to support Main Street businesses, there will not be any aviation-minded individuals around to support the hometown airport. Time will come when the town’s revenues will fall short of funding the services that the entire population expects, and the airport will cease to be a line item.
Other airports survive only because they are supported by Essential Airport Services funding, but the budget proposals floating about reallocate these funds to more politically advantageous recipients. Add the uncertain future of the contract tower program, and working with rough round numbers, it is not implausible that 20 percent or more of the nation’s public use airports will go the way of Meigs Field. Some may suggest that they will survive as destinations for business aviation, but if there are no businesses on and around Main Street, why would business need to fly in there in the first place?
[Read more…] about The Reality of General Aviation Nostalgia
