Train Wreck

About 20 years ago Bob Sevila, who was a five term mayor of Leesburg, called the Leesburg Airport the “Engine of Leesburg’s economic development program”. (I still have this on tape.) This train was fast moving and within a year there were over 12 business jets based at Leesburg. Unfortunately sometime after the early 1990s, the train got derailed. Today there is only one business jet based at Leesburg, and the airport is well on its way, by Town staff estimates, toward losing $1 million dollars a year. Over the last five years the airport has cost the Leesburg taxpayers over $2 million.

Economic impact is measured by the wages, and the purchase of goods and services at the airport. Airport supporters, small plane pilots, many of whom do not live in Leesburg or even Loudoun County, have justified these airport losses by touting a study made several years ago, which claims that the airport has an economic impact of over $40 million. The highest paid employees at the airport worked for the FAA Flight Service Station. That facility has just closed. Today’s economic impact is a fraction of $40 million.

Leasing land for new jet hangars has stalled. Not one new hangar of any kind has been constructed in over five years, while 13 jet hangars have been built at the Manassas Airport in this same period.

For reasons that have nothing to do with business, economic development, or plain common sense, the one bright hope for turning this bleak airport picture around has been turned into a terror campaign that says, “If it happens the airport will close”. It is Crosstrail.

For the last three decades I have made my living in aviation. Some of my work takes me to general aviation airports not unlike Leesburg. I know what the drivers are for success. Two words – Business Jets. I am not opposed to small aircraft, flight schools, flying clubs, experimental aircraft, etc., but these operations, mostly recreational, will never make the Leesburg Airport or any airport viable.

Crosstrail with thousands of square feet of class A office space, aircraft ramps and hangars adjoining the airport, high-end retail and entertainment, and yes, housing, will make this airport and Crosstrail a highly desirable location for Fortune 500 companies (the most profitable own business jets), and their employees. The economic development number will skyrocket as well as tax revenue for the County and the Town.

Why this is not crystal clear to everyone is a mystery to me. But then it is the silly season – an election year.