Tuesday, May 18, 1999
New center at airport to train pilots
4 simulators part of facility
BY PATRICK CROWLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HEBRON — A company that trains Comair Inc. airline pilots with high-tech equipment plans to build a $40 million training center at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
New York-based Flight Safety Inc. will install four flight simulators that cost almost $10 million each, the project's developer told the Kenton County Airport Board on Monday night.
“The cost of the actual building will be $1.5 million to about $2 million,” said Richard D. Huddleston, a partner with the Miller Valentine Group. “It's the equipment that costs all the money.”
The Kenton County Airport Board agreed to issue construction revenue bonds. Flight Safety Inc. will use the money from the sale of the bonds to build the training facility and then repay the bonds, according to the agreement the airport board unanimously approved.
Work will begin immediately on the 13,000-square-foot building, which will be near the control tower and adjacent to the $25 million headquarters Comair is building.
Flight Safety representa tives did not attend Monday's meeting. Mr. Huddleston said he did not know how many people will be employed at the training center.
Flight Safety now operates a smaller training center on Mineola Pike in Erlanger near the airport. It will move out of that building when the new training center is completed next year.
“Flight Safety is a worldwide company that builds and operates flight simulators,” Mr. Huddleston said. “They'll train Comair pilots on simulators that will be installed in the training center.”
In other airport news:
• The board agreed to spend $62,000 to hire consultants and to pay for studies related to parking.
Bill Martin, the airport's director of planning and development, said the Terminal 3 garage that serves Delta Air Lines and Comair — the airport's dominant carriers — is often so full that passengers must park in other garages or parking lots.
“We're not sure exactly how many spaces we need,” Mr. Martin said. “That's what these studies will tell us. But you can just go through there and see that on many days, it's full.”
Mr. Martin said one solution may be to build another multideck garage east of the Terminal 3 garage.
There are about 4,000 spaces available in the terminal parking lots.
The airport board will also study expanding a long-term parking lot that is used heavily by airport employees. The lot has about 4,200 spaces, but 1,800 to 2,000 more are probably needed, he said.
• The number of local passengers — those defined as travelers who start and end their trip at the airport — increased by 13 percent during the first three months of this year, said Bob Holscher, director of aviation.
“These are passengers who come here, fly out somewhere and then return to the airport,” Mr. Holscher said. “Considering that we hear so much about people driving to other airports to find lower fares, that's a pretty phenomenal increase.”
Many people drive to airports in Louisville, Indianapolis, Dayton and elsewhere to find cheaper fares on discount carriers, such as Southwest Airlines, which does not operate out of Cincinnati.
Airports in other cities even advertise in Cincinnati media to attract passengers to the cheaper fares. “But I think this increase shows a lot of people are flying out of here because of the service and convenience we do offer,” Mr. Holscher said.
He attributed the increase to several factors, including the high num ber of direct flights — more than 100 daily — offered by Delta and Comair; reduced fares Comair offers on the weekends; and the presence of some low-cost and competitive fares offered by TWA and Vanguard.
The number of local passengers during the first three months of this year rose to 861,645 compared with 762,193 during the same period in 1998.
Through April, the number of passengers flying out of the airport increased by 4.5 percent, to about 3.3 million over the same period last year. The increase is about double the national average, Mr. Holscher said.
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