Ennis Airport Will Be Closed During Runway Expansion

By Nick Gevock, The Montana Standard, Butte

Jun. 24–The Ennis Big Sky airport will be closed for at least three months during a $3 million runway reconstruction and expansion.

Construction is slated to get started this month and involves rebuilding the existing runway, lengthening it by more than a third and improving its lighting system, said Rick Donaldson, an engineer with Peccia and Associates Inc. in Helena.

At a minimum, the airport will be shut down through September.

“It just depends on how it goes,” he said. “You can’t just say we’ll be done in three months for sure — it’s a big project, but we’re hoping for three months.” The Ennis airport can land small jets. But its runway length of 4,700 feet makes it tough at times for fully loaded jets to take off, Donaldson said.

Jets sometimes land in Ennis and get some fuel, but are unable to fill up because of the weight load. Those pilots often fly to Bozeman to fill up, said Jim Hart, Madison County commissioner.

When the runway project is complete, jets should be able to take off with a full tank from Ennis. The airport will also be able to handle slightly larger jets, although it won’t be big enough for commercial aircraft, Hart said.

Currently the airport can handle about three quarters of small aircraft, Donaldson said. The improvements will make it possible to handle all smaller airplanes.

“They probably won’t get much bigger airplanes, but it will be more useful to those airplanes that it can handle — small business jets and personal aircraft,” he said.

The overall plan calls for the runway reconstruction and adding an additional 1,900 feet of runway to the north of the existing strip. Donaldson said they will also replace the runway lights that are underground with a better system that is run in conduit to make it easier and less expensive to maintain.

The project is estimated to cost $3 million. Donaldson said it will involve a lot of dirt work on the north end of the runway to make it more level and remove a clay layer that makes it difficult to drain.

The county is paying for $150,000 of the job on the publicly owned airport, including $48,000 it received from a state grant through the Department of Transportation’s aeronautics division. The bulk of the cost, roughly $2.85 million, will come from the Federal Aviation Administration’s airport improvement program.

Pilots are being urged to fly into and store airplanes at the Twin Bridges airport this summer while the Ennis facility is out of use, Hart said.

“People have been encouraged to take that route rather than go to Bozeman, Dillon or even West Yellowstone,” he said. “They just have a shorter drive to wherever they want to get.” Reporter Nick Gevock may be reached at nick.gevock@mtstandard.com

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