Passenger Boardings Increase at Dayton, Ohio, Airport

By John Nolan, Dayton Daily News, Ohio

Sep. 17–DAYTON — Passenger boardings at Dayton International Airport for the year to date are up 10 percent from this time a year ago, an airport spokesman said Monday.

The airport’s preliminary figures for the period through the end of August also showed passenger boardings for that month increased about 15 percent from August of 2006, spokesman Gene Conrad said. The airport is projecting 1.4 million passenger boardings for all of 2007, he said.

The increases exceed the Federal Aviation Administration’s projections of 2 percent annual growth in passenger traffic at the Dayton airport through 2019.

The FAA broke ground Monday on a $30.6 million project to construct a new air traffic control tower, administration building and parking lot to replace the airport’s current 1961 control tower. The new tower isn’t scheduled to be ready to take over air traffic control until the summer of 2010.

Despite the FAA’s more conservative estimates of passenger traffic growth at Dayton, the new control tower should be adequate to accommodate growth in the airport’s business, FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said. The tower will accommodate digital equipment needed for the FAA’s planned switch from the current radar-based national air traffic control system to a satellite-based network that can provide real-time reports of aircraft positions in flight, Molinaro said.

Danis Building Construction Co., general contractor for the tower project, will begin excavation in mid-October to prepare for the concrete foundation work, spokesman David Parker said Monday. Danis will oversee about 25 subcontractors on the project, Parker said.

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