Aviation View Magazine | Volume 1, Issue 4

101 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 1, ISSUE 4 Western Maryland, South-Central Pennsylvania, and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. “I have been working here for a few months now,” explains Airport Director, Rick Johnson. “This is a beautiful city and county. It seems very relaxed, like we have left the hustle and bustle of a larger city behind. And I guess that is one of the main things that sets our airport apart – it is just so convenient and easy to use. We are a quarter of a mile from the highway to the parking lot, which is free, and then we have a small terminal with a ticket counter right inside the door. You sit right there and wait for your aircraft to pick you up. It is the ease of access that makes people keep coming back.” There are a lot of reasons people choose to fly in to the Hagerstown area as a destination. It is home to the Maryland Theatre and Performing Arts Complex, The Maryland Symphony Orchestra, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, historic battlefield, museums, HAGERSTOWN REGIONAL A I RPORT restaurants, and more. Then there is the outdoor recreation, which may be the most popular reason to visit. Washington County boasts the majority of Maryland’s Appalachian Trail, the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and the Potomac River. There are five national parks and eight state parks in the county, with an abundance of options for hiking, biking, kayaking, boating, birding, and photography. When it comes to the airport itself, the backstory is just as interesting. In 1928, the Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company bought 60 acres of farmland to use as an airport. The City of Hagerstown then purchased it in 1933. At the same time, Kreider-Reisner was purchased and renamed the Fairchild Aircraft Corporation. Hagerstown became an airport manufacturing hub and in World War II Fairchild built PT-19 trainers and C-82 Packet transport there. Then after the war, they produced the C-119 and C-123 military transports and license-produced Fokker F27 airliners. Production ceased in the