“Our international departures out of the airport have gone up tremendously. Now we do about 150 international flights out of the airport every year which puts us in the number three spot in Indiana.” “It’s our next frontier,” he states. So much so that Sachs has explored the potential to grow its international services to include possessing the capacity to welcome international flights landing at the airport as well. “It has been a hot topic over the last year or so in terms of how best to capture international travel. We know that we have international flights already, but we can not bring in arrivals because we don’t have a customs facility yet. We do have, however, the departures to meet that demand,” Sachs outlines. The airport is now, Sachs offers, going through the process of establishing a customs facility on its grounds with construction on the building expected to begin this summer. Sachs predicts the construction to be completed by the following summer, and at that point, he will set his sights on working closely with US Customs and Border Protection to staff the facility on a full-time basis. “We see it [international arrivals and departures with US Customs operations at the airport] as a way of attracting even more business.” “We have a new hangar that is going to be under construction here in just a few months and part of that hangar we are actually building,” Sachs continues. “The annex onto that hangar is intended to be the customs facility. Customs have already had site visits to the airport, and we are in close communication with them because they know the numbers.” AIRPORT BUSINESS GROWTH It isn’t just the county and areas throughout Indianapolis that are seeing business booming, 31 AVIATION VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 05, ISSUE 02 INDIANAPOLIS EXECUTIVE AIRPORT
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