JC airport celebrates runway renovation with open house


Light-sport pilot Dennis Sapp, front, and Young Eagle
flyer Austin Evers, 16, adjust their headsets before taking
flight in Sapp's Zenith CH701 airplane Saturday at the
Jefferson City Memorial Airport for the airport reopening
ceremony and fly-in event.
Light-sport pilot Dennis Sapp, front, and Young Eagle flyer Austin Evers, 16, adjust their headsets before taking flight in Sapp's Zenith CH701 airplane Saturday at the Jefferson City Memorial Airport for the airport reopening ceremony and fly-in event.

Now that runway renovation work is complete, the Jefferson City Memorial Airport is getting back to normal operations.

"All 67 of our airplanes that have been based here are back," said Airport Division Director Ron Craft. "While the runways were closed most went to Columbia, Fulton or the Lake of the Ozarks."

The runways reopened Monday after almost two weeks of no traffic.

Saturday, the airport hosted its annual open house and fly-in, complete with pancake breakfast, Young Eagles Rally and radio-controlled aircraft, as a way to celebrate the completion of the $7 million improvement project.

First announced in 2012, the city received a grant from MoDOT to resurface the main runway and make repairs to the second runway. The work was largely funded through the MoDOT grant while the city covered the rest of the expenses through funds from the half-cent capital improvements sales tax.

"We shouldn't have to do anything to the runways for at least 10, hopefully 20, years," Craft said. "That's what their designed for."

There are still several more phases to the project - such as addressing the other taxiways and lighting - but that aspect shouldn't affect customers of the airport as much as the work on the runways did.

The whole project should be finished sometime in late December.

"This airport is usually ranked around the seventh busiest in the state," Craft said. "MoDOT did a study a couple of years ago and determined the Jefferson City airport brought in $22 to $25 million to the local economy."

Although no airlines fly out of the airport, Craft said they still have numerous corporate flights coming in and out of the facility as well as planes used for state business and by the military.

"We also have quite a few recreational flights," he said. "In a normal year we'll have 30,000 take-offs and landings."