Aviation View | Volume 2, Issue 1

159 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 Reading even more strategically important. Albeit for different reasons, today Reading continues to be strategically located on several fronts, which is a bonus for business at Reading Regional Airport. “What makes our position interesting, as far as location, is that we’re right in the middle of the mid-Atlantic area,” explains Airport Director Zackary J. Tempesco. “We are also located right in the middle of major economic areas, when you take it from a metropolitan standpoint. We’re within a couple hour drive to New York, Philadelphia, Allentown, and Harrisburg. Berks County is almost like an unturned stone, and we are just now realizing the potential and seeing it building up. People are discovering the cost of operating out of our airport is lower, and because of that, there has been a lot of interest from corporations. They see that they can keep their base of operations here at a lower cost and then operate like a hub and spoke type system to READING REGIONAL A I RPORT these larger metropolitan areas, which are only a hop, skip, and jump away.” Before the pandemic, Reading Regional had been steadily growing. 2020, however, brought a nosedive. There was a notable loss in fuel sales and operations – specifically on the commercial side, which temporarily stopped completely. “The numbers are definitely still down,” Tempesco muses, “but you can feel the comeback. The airport is the busiest we have seen in a long time when it comes to corporate operators. We are on track to see 2022 keeping in line with our 2019 position. We were on a steady incline as far as traffic then, and I think starting this year we will be once again. Corporate and personal flight is growing quickly, and we want to try to be online for accommodating that growth. We have been experiencing enough interest lately that we are looking at what would be necessary to achieve our full buildout.” The airport had been stagnant for many years