ERLANGER, Ky. — “Kentucky is booming.”
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport believes a new $45 million maintenance hangar will fuel more economic growth in the region.
“The bottom line is this is 250 new jobs,” CVG Airport CEO Candace McGraw said.
This is the second FEAM Aero hangar at CVG. The first one opened in 2020.
“It just became the demand that drove the decision to build another one,” FEAM Aero CEO Fred Murphy said.
McGraw backed that claim up. She said they didn’t have enough facilities to accommodate the amount of aircraft they had.
“What we want to do is make sure everyone can fly their plane in here and have the maintenance done here without having to go somewhere else,” she said.
The new hangar is 150,000 square feet and can fit three wide-body planes. The other FEAM hangar can only fit two planes.
Murphy said expanding at CVG was an easy decision.
“No red tape, no bureaucracy, strictly just trying to get businesses to come here, hire people, create opportunities and it makes the jobs so much easier,” he said.
McGraw said this facility will ensure businesses like Amazon, Atlas and DHL can continue to operate here and service their planes.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear attended the ribbon cutting. He said this new hangar would help more people in Kentucky live a better life.
“These are jobs that pay really good wages that teach you impressive skills that are in high demand, and so what this means is that we’re not creating jobs of the past,” he said. “We’re creating jobs of the future.”
Feam Aero is also investing in a new aircraft mechanic school, Epic Flight Academy, at CVG that will open in April.
“Our goal is to help them not only get their license, but also get some of the skills that are necessary to jump right into working on … large commercial airplanes, and make the transition time shorter for them to get to that level,” Murphy said.
McGraw said that you don’t need any experience to attend the flight academy. She said the program would take about a year and a half to complete.
She said this new hangar will help the airport with its future expansion plans.
“Everything is a building block on each other right? I think you have cargo growth, you have passenger growth, now you have to figure out how to keep that flywheel going,” she said.
McGraw said one of their growth projects includes adding more hangars.
“It's a vision of several hundred acres of land to open up a series of hangars just like this,” McGraw said. “So there could be several hangars like this, avionics shops, places where pieces and parts are needed for aviation for the repair of aircraft are actually manufactured either onsite here or near the airport.”
She said the second project would create a space for deliveries that aren’t time-sensitive.
“We have some cargo that comes in here that’s not as time-sensitive in its delivery, so we’re going to open up a whole new area in the north parcel portion of our airport around sort of that freight-forwarding cargo logistics,” she said.
Murphy said CVG is one of the best airports to work with and didn’t rule out expanding its footprint in Northern Kentucky.
Beshear would also like to see the company grow in the Commonwealth if the opportunity presents itself.
