IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Banning Municipal Airport is about to get a new fueling station, the first of several improvements planned for the city-owned airport.
The above-ground “fuel farm” will be built on the west end of the airport and will replace an underground fuel tank on the airport’s east side, said Art Vela, city engineer.
The underground tank is being replaced so that the area planes used to taxi can be moved to make that area safer, said Vela, Banning’s project engineer on the airport upgrades.
Both tanks hold 10,000 gallons of fuel, but the new tanks will be open 24 hours, unlike the underground tanks, which only function for about 12 hours a day. Banning officials hope better access to fuel will attract more flights.
“It will be just like a service station that stays open all the time, where you just put your credit card in,” Vela said. “The pilots will he able to put [fuel] in their planes whenever they want to.”
Construction is scheduled to start in mid-November and take about three months to complete. The project is expected to cost $518,00, with most of that to be paid with grants from the Federal Aviation Administration, Vela said.
More flights would mean more revenue for the general aviation airport, which has one asphalt runway, covers about 140 acres and is home to approximately 40 planes, all of them single engine.
In addition to the new fueling station and revamped taxi area, city officials hope to demolish several hangars and replace them with better facilities. A schedule for that project has not been set.
City officials hope to bring in enough extra money to host air shows and other events at the airport, which has never been a big revenue producer. Small municipal airports often struggle financially because their only major sources of revenue are fuel sales and leases paid for hangar space.
“I would say [Banning Municipal] is a stable facility, but it’s not profitable,” Vela said. “Certainly the city isn’t getting rich from owning the airport.”
