The Airport Advisory Board will meet on Wednesday, January 24th, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. at the City Hall Commission Meeting Room, 123 S. Main Street, Fort Scott, Kansas. This meeting is open to the public.
Category Archives: Airport
New Aircraft Maintenance Business Coming to Fort Scott Airport
A full-service aircraft repair station will soon be available at Fort Scott Municipal Airport, 1869 Indian Road, southwest of the city.
Spectra Jet, Inc., Springfield, Ohio, will start a maintenance facility at the airport in the next two months, according to Kenny Howard, the airport manager.
“They will start with four to five employees,” Howard said. “They hope to be up to 10 employees in a certain amount of time.”
The company will lease part of a hangar at the airport for their business until they can build one of their own, Howard said.
Currently, there are eight hangars at the airport, two privately owned and six owned by the City of Fort Scott.
The desired outcome of this new business is to bring more airplanes to the airport, Howard said.
Currently, there are 45 airplanes in a week, he said.
“Some come to town to look at the community,” Howard said. “Some have family here.”
In addition, Fort Scott Airport is a good refueling stop for those traveling cross-county, he said.
Funding Airport Day
If you saw a bi-plane doing loops on Thursday, you were witnessing an innovative way of raising funds for Airport Day. Several individuals paid for a ride with Kelly Pietrowicz in her aerobatics plane Thursday evening and funds were used to help sponsor Airport Day.
Kelly’s plane is a Pitts Special–a two seater bi-wing plane. Riders were given some instruction in what to expect and how to keep from blacking out. They had to empty their pockets to make sure nothing would fall out that might get stuck under any of the controls and were strapped into the front seat of the plane with a parachute attached to their backs.
The rides lasted about 20 minutes and included inverted flight, loops, rolls and stalls.
David Sachau was one of the riders. He said the ride a lot of fun and it wasn’t as hard on the stomach as he thought it might be. However, David earned his pilots license when he was 17, so he might not exactly represent the experience of an “average” person.
Kansas Senator Bob Marshall was the other rider. As a former AirForce pilot of the F-4 Phantom and the F-8 Crusader, he is probably a bit more conditioned for aerobatics as well.