In January, Bruce Loy will be retiring from his position as manager of the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport. After 22 years, a lot has been accomplished under his wing, and he expects a few more projects to take off during the time he has left.
One includes building a new tower, land acquisition, and hangar at the airport, which will be funded by a capital improvement sales tax recently approved by voters.
“When I came here, there weren’t a lot of buildings on the airport and I’m kind of proud of what we’ve done,” says Loy. “I wish we could’ve done more, but we’ve increased our traffic quite a bit.”
By ‘traffic,’ Loy is referring to both general and business aviation. Just this month, boardings topped the 10,000 mark across this calendar year. This is thanks to a large development made in December of 2017, when the U.S. Department of Transportation approved United Express airline SkyWest as the new air carrier to provide service to the airport.
“Gosh, I was out here a couple Saturdays ago, and by 2 or 3 o’clock, the tower told me they were up to 150 operations [that day], and that’s either a take-off or a landing,” says Loy. “From an economic standpoint, I think people in this area and this region really do understand the importance of the airport and what it brings.”
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