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Yeager Airport officials look over the retaining wall at the end of runway safety zone that was recently completed following the March 2015 collapse of its predecessor.
Yeager Airport officials look over the retaining wall at the end of runway safety zone that was recently completed following the March 2015 collapse of its predecessor.
During the ceremony celebrating the completion of Yeager Airport’s rebuilt Emergency Materials Arresting System, which was destroyed in a 2015 landslide, Gov. Jim Justice had news to announce regarding even more changes coming to ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä’s airport.
“You know, we’ve done bunches of upgrades to Yeager, but we don’t have a customs building, and we don’t have any money to have a customs building, so we’ve gone back and looked and looked and looked,†he said. “In order to truly bring this into an international gateway, we’ve got to have $2 million. And so, today, I’m telling Kent [Carper], our senators, everything, we’ve found the money.â€
Carper is president of the Kanawha County Commission.
Currently, Yeager only has one Customs and Border Patrol agent who works at the airport throughout the week. This new funding would give the site a separate building that would serve as the port of entry for international travelers.
Justice will direct the Department of Commerce to request funds for the project from the West Virginia Infrastructure Jobs Development Council, a body that was created by the state Legislature to manage and facilitate funding for infrastructure and other projects.
According to Yeager Airport management, this is something they have wanted to happen for quite some time.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a very big deal,†Terry Sayre, airport director, said. “I know Nick Keller [assistant airport director] and myself have been trying to get that money for the customs building for a long time, and we’re thankful that the governor is going to bring that into fruition.â€
Justice said this is one of the missing links to what Yeager Airport has to do to become an international gateway.
“You can’t bring people in here from foreign countries and everything unless you have a customs center to bring them through,†he said. “You can bring people in, and we can process them and everything, but doing it in an expedited manner and doing it in the way that it’s done in real airports across a lot of different places [is] what we need to become.â€
Justice was joined at the ceremony by U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito, the Kanawha County Commission, ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin and others to celebrate the finalization of the EMAS system on Runway 5.
The system is designed to safely stop airplanes, in the event they overshoot the runway, by using geofoam blocks and other materials to cushion the impact.
“We had a weather problem, as you may recall, and we kind of lost that part of the runway and lost the EMAS, and that put us in jeopardy of a lot of flights, a lot of opportunities that we would’ve had that we would’ve lost,†Manchin said.
“If we didn’t have the full-out safety and if we couldn’t give the airlines and the pilots and everything the full-out assurance that this airport is as safe as it can be and will be, I daresay that we would not be having the traffic and the vitality of business that we have coming into the airport, so I’m really happy to play a part in it,†Capito said. “I’m going to do everything I can to keep it up.â€
Capito added that she thinks the appropriations for the creating of the customs building is crucial to creating an international presence that helps West Virginia grow economically.
Goodwin was on the same page.
“You can’t have a vibrant and thriving city without a vibrant and thriving airport. And customs, what it will do, will certainly expand our reach, and it will give us that national spotlight, that national attention that this airport is surely worthy of,†she said. “You don’t have to look too far in the past couple of weeks when we had a mass influx of people coming from all over the country, and what a huge financial shot in the arm it was for the city of ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä. But what we need, though, is double those efforts, triple those efforts, and this is just a step in the right direction of making that happen.â€
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