Smooth flying for Pellston Regional Airport
PETOSKEY — The Pellston Regional Airport showed strong numbers in jet fuel sales and number of passengers in 2023.
Airport director Ryan Bachelor presented the 2023 metrics to the Emmet County Board of Commissioners during their meeting on Thursday, June 13, highlighting statistics, funding sources, ongoing projects and more.
The airport is home to a number of different facilities, from the main terminal to hangars to storage areas. Each facility may come with its own set of rules and regulations, depending on how it is used.
“We’ve got quite a lot of facilities there with varying degrees of compliance,” Bachelor said. “For fuel, we have to work with MDOT as well as the airlines to make sure we’re maintaining our fuel quantity in the tanks and everything like that.”
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Last year, the airport handled 11,830 air traffic operations.
“Basically any time someone crosses the threshold of the runway and leaves the runway, that would be two aircraft operations,” Bachelor said. “We had 45,130 passengers coming in and out, with 22,171 people getting on the plane at Pellston going elsewhere.”
The airport sold 634,800 gallons of Jet A fuel, which Bachelor said “barely missed” exceeding their highest year within the last 10-year period.
Bachelor cited data from the 2017 Michigan Aviation System Plan, which puts the the airport’s local economic impact at around $60 million annually.
“It’s one of our main economic drivers for the county,” said commissioner Neil Ahrens.
Bachelor also discussed some of the airport’s capital projects, such as the acquisition of a new Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) vehicle.
He also noted concerns with the airline schedule from the last few years, including direct flights and the size of the aircraft flying into Pellston.
“Now that we’re in June, we’re actually up to four flights a day,” he said. “For quite a while, our passenger numbers were hurting a little bit because we didn’t have that morning flight for business travelers, but now that we have that back our numbers are looking pretty strong.”
For more information about the Pellston Regional Airport, visit pellstonairport.org.
— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Smooth flying for Pellston Regional Airport: Airport director presents 2023 report
