If current trends hold, the Midland International Air & Space Port could break its 1986 record for emplanements — people getting on a plane to fly out.
Director of Airports for the City of Midland Justine Ruff said their busiest year ever was 1986 when they had 650,000 emplanements.
Back then, the airport had all the main airlines and full-size planes.
“In 2019, we came close to that with 630,000 and we’re on trend this year to beat it,” Ruff said.
This year, the airport could get to 660,000 emplanements.
Ruff started in airport operations in 1991 and has been director of operations since 2015. The airports include Midland Air & Space Port and Midland Airpark.
“The chamber of commerce talks about heads in beds. I’m more interested in people leaving town. They can come back, but the ones that are leaving town work towards our grant funds,” Ruff said.
Airport funding mainly comes from parking fees.
“That’s our biggest revenue source,” Ruff said.
She added that this is true for most airports.
“We do have some oil and gas revenue — a small amount. We have tenants, of course, that we get revenue from, but our biggest by far, our cash cow, is parking,” Ruff said.
The airport gets 7 cents a gallon from the fuel flowage fee for fuel pumped into airplanes — the airlines and private planes — in the airport and airpark and right-of-ways.
They also get 10 percent of gross from car rental fees and food and beverage sales. These contracts are bid out.
There also are landing fees if you weigh over a certain weight. It’s built into the airline contracts.
There is a passenger facility charge that funds airport projects.
“When you buy a ticket, the most you ever have to pay in a passenger facility charge is $9. That’s anybody in the United States who buys an airline ticket does not have to pay more than $9. Of that $9, this airport collects $4.50. If you were flying from here to Atlanta and you flew from here to DFW, we get $4.50, DFW gets $4.50 and Atlanta doesn’t get anything,” Ruff said.
“If Midland did not charge the $4.50, then the same flight you would pay the $4.50 and the $4.50 to Atlanta and Midland would get nothing, so when people say I don’t understand why you have a passenger facility charge that is why,” Ruff said.
“We can use that money for projects that enhance safety, security and capacity. It definitely makes sense to have that,” she added. “You can’t just collect it to use it at some point in the future. You have to have an approved project on the books ready to go that you’re collecting it for.”
Projects have to go through Federal Aviation Administration.
“The other revenue we have is the Airport Improvement Program. When you buy a ticket, you pay a ticket tax and all that money goes to Washington and the big aviation trust fund that they can’t raid for anything else. Then at the end of the year, they go back and they take your number of emplanements for each airport and they divide out that money based on your emplanements. We usually get $3.4-$3.5 million,” Ruff said.
There are some projects that are 90 percent federal government with a 10 percent local match.
“A lot of cities can’t make their 10 percent match. That money goes into another pot called discretionary and then all the other airports fight over it and try and get it,” Ruff said.
Midland has always been able to get the 10 percent match.
“We’re an enterprise fund with the city, so we pay for all the city services that we get from them. We pay about $5 million a year to the City of Midland. That gets us our police, fire and the other services that we have from the city — personnel, legal all those things,” Ruff said.
The airport pays for sewer and water separately.
They have 12 Midland Police officers, two sergeants and a lieutenant that are based at the airport. They provide 24/7 coverage.
They have City of Midland fire as well with three different shifts of four people.
“We have 12. Then we … have an aircraft rescue firefighting chief who works up here and he’s a liaison between us and the fire department,” Ruff said.
While it used to host all full-size jets, the airport now has a mixture of commuter and large planes.
“Southwest only flies 737s. Both American and United mix. They’ll up-gage if they’re going to fill a flight,” Ruff said.
Delta was at the airport in the early 2000s and Continental turned into United.
“We have a direct flight to Austin now that we didn’t have before. We have both airports in Dallas; both airports in Houston; Phoenix and Denver,” Ruff said.
“United and Southwest have direct flights to Denver,” she added.
Parking is especially busy Thursday through Sunday. But there are a lot of people who work in the area for the week and leave here Thursday or Friday, so that fills up the parking lots and makes for long lines at the checkpoint.
“In 2018, we increased the parking by 50 percent, and we still on the weekends, are probably 90 percent capacity. We are looking at a parking garage project, but that’s very expensive so we’re weighing the pros and cons,” Ruff said.
There are digital signs outside the airport that tell you what lots are full. Ruff said those have been helpful.
Ruff said they are going to have a fixed based operator, or FBO, which she said is like a gas station for airplanes. “For the last several years, we’ve had one FBO and that’s Signature. We’re going to have a Millionaire FBO. It’s going to in the old Commemorative Air Force area. They’re hoping to be in business by the start of 2025. They’re in their due diligence now. They’ve got some buildings to tear down and some buildings to build,” Ruff said.
The airport has AST SpaceMobile, which she said does some “really cool things with satellites.”
“We also have Kepler Aerospace and they’re working on different projects,” Ruff said.
The airport has been in its building since 1994, but people refer to it as the “new building.”
“We have more than a million people traipse through it every year, so there’s a lot of upkeep,” Ruff said.
For more than a year, the airport has been doing painting, flooring and rehabbing all the restrooms. They’re on the last set of restrooms at the south end of the concourse by Gates 3 and 4.
They should be open in September.
They are also looking at adding security to the south end of the terminal building.
“Right now we have two lines and this would give us the option for up to five. We’d have a dedicated pre-check line from the beginning and it would be ground level so there would be no chance of anyone waiting in line on stairs because we have that now. Then you go upstairs to the concourse level, much like at Love Field,” Ruff said.
“We are working with an engineering firm to get a probable cost for this and then we’ll shop it around and see if there are any kind of grants available,” she added.
Grants come from the Federal Aviation Administration and it’s money from the ticket tax and passenger facility charge.
The airport’s budget is $8 to $9 million. It has 35 city of Midland employees. They are missing three in airport operations.
“To work in airport operations, you have to have a degree in airport business administration and they don’t offer that locally, so people have to move here from out of town. There are other airports offering, too. Midland’s not first on anyone’s list. It’s definitely interesting work. This is the kind of job where you have to go to work and a lot of people right out of college want a stay at home job,” Ruff said.
A big event they have coming up is Fly Into Fall to get youngsters interested in flying planes, airplane mechanics and a variety of other fields. A 600,000 person shortfall is expected in the next 10 years.
“There’s a huge shortage in the aviation field and a lot of it is because kids are not being introduced to aviation like our generation was. My husband is a pilot because one day he was riding his bike past an airport in New York saw an old plane and started looking at it. The guy gave him a ride and he’s a pilot. Our son is a pilot because he grew up in our house. He has a couple of friends that are interested in aviation because they grew up in our house, too. But the exposure is not the same as it was. You can’t go to an airport now and get a ride,” Ruff said.
“Last year, councilwoman (Robin) Poole started this initiative for Fly Into Fall. We had it last year at Midland Airpark to introduce kids to aviation,” she said.
They were expecting 300 people last year and wound up with 500. This year, they are prepared for 1,000 or more.
“There’s a flight school at Airpark and they’re going to be offering free discovery flights to just take you up for five minutes and just experience it. There’s going to be a company there with a drone obstacle course for kids to try. There are going to be several different space and aviation organizations, so it should be a good event to get kids interested in aviation, aircraft mechanics, flight attendants and all of that,” Ruff said.
