CAPE COUNCIL AUTHORIZES MASTER PLAN FOR AIRPORT

What should the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport expect in passenger boardings or commercial flights for the coming years?

What sort of runway space and taxiway extensions might be needed to accommodate added planes?

No one has a crystal ball to forecast how much growth the airport can expect in coming years, said Bruce Loy, airport manager for the city, but there are ways to prepare for whatever might come along.

The city council has authorized Crawford, Murphy and Tilly consultants of St. Louis to complete an airport layout plan update. The project should take about a year.

The master plan will consider how the airport will change in the next five, 10 and 20 years and will serve as a blueprint to outline what projects might be needed to accommodate growth.

The city's airport operates under a 1991 master plan, which is becoming obsolete. Plans are generally updated every five to seven years.

"A new master plan is necessary to better reflect the current planning trends and future capital development needs of the airport," Loy said in a letter to the council.

The city must match 10 percent of the project's $84,000 cost. The Federal Aviation Administration will pay for 90 percent of the work.

The project shows a layout map of the airport, lists possible projects and estimated costs, and involves public input.

Several public meetings will be set over the course of the work, and an advisory committee will be selected "to feed information to the consultants," Loy said.

"We'll look at what the current trends are in aviation," he said, "and we'll take a heavy, concentrated look at regional business jet traffic."

Based on what Loy has heard and the general growth in business and development throughout the area, corporate jet travel might be the airport's next growth area.

A separate study will determine from where airplane passengers not using the airport are departing from and what are their destinations.

"We think they use Memphis (Tenn.) and St. Louis, and possibly Paducah, Ky., but we might be surprised by what we find out," Loy said.

Knowing where that "leakage" of passengers is will help the airport better attract airlines and better serve passengers, he said.

Looking at areas of growth, passenger needs, anticipated development and construction projects not only helps the city plan its future airport needs, it is good for the FAA also.

"The FAA uses this as their own barometer for determining funds," Loy said.

The administration will look at final projects and projected schedules to determine what sort of funding allocation is needed on a national level for airports.

FAA then submits its findings to Congress to request allocations. Once the allocation has been established, the Cape Girardeau airport is eligible for as much as $150,000 a year in federal grants that can be used for safety-related projects, Loy said.

But the airport master plan is just the process for getting things started. It helps to plan so that when grant applications are available, the city can apply, Loy said.

"The idea is thinking about future growth," he said. Before the work is complete, "there will be several multimillion-dollar projects outlined" in the plan.