Aviation View | Volume 2, Issue 2

90 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 increasing their activity here. Our airport also sees a significant amount of military traffic from various training bases across the western U.S., as well as transitory military aircraft. “Four Corners is a good fuel stop for aircraft that don’t have a really long range, like helicopters and small airplanes. So we see some of that traffic from time to time, as well. It’s a good revenue source for us, in fact, fuel sales have gone up every year for the last few years. It’s interesting, I don’t know how to explain it other than we’re seeing a lot of corporate jet traffic. Our FBO, Atlantic Aviation, offers hangar space, aircraft maintenance, in-flight catering, flight crew lounge, and flight planning services, along with fuel sales, but we have a fuel flowage fee that the airport gets for every gallon of fuel sold on the field. It’s required for us to collect that because the FAA is always looking to make sure we try to offset the cost of the operation of the airport as best we can, through user fees.” BVM: Let’s talk general aviation at Four Corners –what’s happening there? Lewis: “Hey, that’s good news! General aviation has actually been picking up. Even though there was a little flattening of the curve in 2020 due to COVID, GA has increased here every year since 2015 and continues to grow. We have about 122 based aircraft, with a lot of corporate traffic. Recreational flying is coming back to a certain extent, but it may start being blunted by the fuel price. These guys are going from $5.50 per gallon to, in some cases, $7.50 or $8.00. Percentage-wise, that’s a huge jump for recreational flying. “In the last year, we gained a flight ambulance company (Guardian) that’s now based here and UPS and FedEx are here every day. We also have Roadrunner Flight School that is very active with three airplanes and they stay busy all the time. They have a lot of students and are really