An upgrade to the local runway will be making life easier for the pilots who will be dropping into the Oliver Airport.
The Town of Oliver and the provincial Liberal government through BC on the Move, a 10-year transportation investment plan, have picked up the bill for the project.
The local airport was successful in applying for a $157,350 grant to make the runway safer and the fuel pumps more accessible.
Oliver Airport manager Paul Dumoret praised the province’s grant program for assisting small airports.
“Because we just don’t have the business and revenue to attract that kind of money,” he said. “But all this helps us generate more revenue for the town so that the airport can become more self-sufficient.”
At certain times, there are large volumes of traffic using the airport and without a paved taxiway, the runway has to be shared by fast and slow-moving aircraft.
“In order to take off at an airport like this, you have to go out onto the active runway and taxi down from one end to another, and while you’re doing that you’re occupying an active runway, which is fine in normal cases, but poses more opportunity for an accident.”
After the upgrades are made, planes will be able to spend less time on the active runway by traveling along a paved taxiway. Aircraft will also be able to travel to fuel pumps over a paved surface, replacing grass and gravel.
Those features are important to higher-end aircraft, which is why Dumoret expects more charter and turbine equipment to be touching down on the local runway.
“They cannot taxi off from the grass or the dirt, they’re just too expensive of machines. Anybody coming here will think of safety concern, show we’re thinking about it, and we’ll help accommodate our traffic a lot better.”
Dumoret expects the engineering and planning for the project to begin quickly in order for shovels in the ground by late fall and he hopes paving will be underway by next spring.
Boundary-Similkameen MLA Linda Larson said the Liberal government made the investment to support the economies of B.C.’s small communities.
She said the grant is being dolled out in increments over three years, and that last week’s announcement wasn’t political pandering ahead of the 2017 provincial election.
“There is the normal monies that come out as a general rule which are ongoing,” she said. “Most monies that come out have been applied for years in advance. They’re not usually last-minute type of things.”
DAN WALTON
Oliver Chronicle
