The first new hanger facility at Detroit’s municipal airport in nearly 60 years has officially opened.
Mayor Mary Sheffield helped cut the ribbon on Wednesday, June 3, for the newly constructed 20,000-square-foot hangar and attached 5,000-square-foot operations terminal at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport on the city’s east side.
The facility belongs to AVFlight, an Ann Arbor-based company that is a fixed-based operator at airports worldwide, offering services such as fueling, ground handling and hangar storage. The company had been leasing facilities at the municipal airport since 2011. AVFlight says it spent millions to built its new permanent facility.
“AVFlight’s investment and long-term commitment to Detroit helps strengthen our aviation infrastructure,” Sheffield said, “while positioning the Coleman Young International Airport as an increasingly important gateway to our city.”
Detroit’s city airport opened in 1927 and has operated solely as a base for corporate jets, small private planes and training aircraft since 2000, when the last commercial airline to serve the airport, Pro Air, discontinued service. (Southwest Airlines pulled out in 1993.)
The city of Detroit provides about $4 million a year for the airport out of its general fund.
Airport officials say the number of takeoffs and landings per year are rising and are up to about 45,000, compared with just over 37,000 in 2014. However, the airport was handling over 100,000 takeoffs and landings a year during the 1990s.
The airport was especially busy last weekend for the Detroit Grand Prix, when it handled about 60 aircraft, according to Airport Director Jason Watt.
“Which is a huge amount for this airport at one single time,” he said.
Outside of special events like the Grand Prix, the airport handles a lot of private air travel for executives who are with or visiting the region’s big companies, such as the automakers, Watt said.
The city recently removed the airport’s shorter crosswinds runway in an effort to clear up about 80 acres of land for potential commercial or industrial development, and may issue a request for proposals for the site in the future.
Airport officials have said that the crosswinds runway was used less than 10% of the time, and without it, planes can divert to other airports in the region, such as Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti.
During the Biden administration, city officials once expected the Federal Aviation Administration to fully fund a new air traffic control tower using pandemic-era stimulus dollars to replace the existing tower from 1973. However, Watt said the city is still working with the FAA to get that project off the ground.
“All the funding on the federal side has been a little bit difficult, you know, as far as it being distributed,” he told reporters. “So we’re working through that with the Federal Aviation Administration now, and hopefully we’ll see some movement on that project shortly.”
Joseph Meszaros, senior vice president of operations at AVFlight, said the company has 16 employees at the airport and can fit four to 10 jets inside the new hanger, depending on size. Detroit’s municipal airport is one of about 30 airports where AVFlight operates, he said.
“The transformation happening here at Coleman A Young International Airport is a direct reflection of Detroit’s resurgence, innovation and momentum,” Meszaros said.
Following the ribbon cutting, Mayor Sheffield had a short chat with 19-year-old Detroiter Herbert Anderson, who has been training at the airport in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk and received his official pilot certification last week for solo flights.
Anderson also just graduated from Detroit Public Schools Community District’s Davis Aerospace Technical High School, which is one of the few high schools in the country to offer an aviation curriculum.
The high school is preparing to relocate to the airport’s newly renovated main terminal in the fall. The school previously left the airport in 2013 to go into the Golightly Career and Tech Center off East Jefferson.
Contact JC Reindl at 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit’s municipal airport gets first new facility in nearly 60 years
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
