The City of Humboldt wants to study the future of its airport. (Submitted photo/City of Humboldt)

By Doug Lett

Humboldt airport study

Humboldt airport study sought

Apr 3, 2023 | 1:00 PM

Humboldt is hoping to take a deep dive into its airport’s future.

The city has applied for a grant through the provincial Community Airport Partnership to lay out a plan for the airport’s future.

“Like many airports, the runway itself is in need of some resurfacing,” said City Manager Joe Day. “So that could be fairly costly. And then just the services around the airstrip itself, such as hangars, we need to evaluate how we are processing that part of the business.”

Humboldt’s airport is used by both industry and recreational users. Courtesy City of Humboldt

Day said the city’s airport is used extensively by the agriculture industry during the growing season.

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“The airport is used a lot by the agriculture industry for spraying,” said Day, adding there is also a lot of recreational use as well.

“The feasibility study is to determine if we should be expanding in either of those areas or if there’s other areas that we haven’t explored, that we should be marketing our airstrip too,” said Day.

The city is planning for a study worth around $60,000. If the city gets a grant, that would cover about half the cost, with the City footing the bill for the other $30,000, either from reserves or operating surpluses.

“The whole reason for the feasibility study is to find out whether we should get bigger, get smaller, where there’s business opportunities that we might be missing,” said Day.

He said airports are not cheap to operate, and smaller airports like Humboldt don’t have the consistent revenue that bigger airports often have.

“Some of the bigger airports obviously have revenue streams that are well established…many of these smaller aerodromes lack that formalization of fee structures…that’s what we’re looking at is what opportunities there are for expansion, or some simplifying some of the services, or anything along those lines to help us make decisions on what kind of upgrades and maintenance we should be doing,” he said.

Day said if the city gets approval for the grant, they would likely issue a request for proposals (RFP) to hire an outside consultant.

Humboldt’s airport is about two kilometres south of the city. It covers around 73 acres, with refuelling tanks, an apron area and two runways. The city said while it can be used 24/7, there is no permanent staff on site.

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doug.lett@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @DougLettSK