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Airport authority seeks spring opening for Brookley commercial terminal

Posted by Dale Liesch | Nov 20, 2018 | Bay Briefs | 1 |

The first commercial flight out of Brookley Field is still expected to take off in 2019, the Mobile Airport Authority (MAA) president confirmed, with recent moves by the board bringing it closer to reality.

MAA President Chris Curry said the organization’s board of directors recently authorized construction activity related to the renovation of an existing building at Brookley to become a low-cost carrier terminal.

“When we started this, we hired KPS to move us through the process to select a construction manager,” he said. KPS Group is a Birmingham-based architectural firm.

Through a request for proposals or RFP process, the MAA selected Jesco Construction Co. as the construction manager and Michael Baker as the engineering firm for the terminal.

The existing building is a 50,000-square-foot former logistics building Airbus currently uses as a foreign trade zone, Curry said.

“We’re going to share it with Airbus for another six months,” he said. “Then we’ll take over the building.”

After renovations the building will become Terminal 1 and be used primarily for low-cost carriers until a master plan can be completed. The terminal is expected to open by April 30, 2019, and should cost $3.2 million to complete.

The expectation is that Via Airlines will be the terminal’s first commercial carrier, Curry said.

“Via has expressed a desire to move to the terminal as soon as it’s open,” he said. “We continue to talk to other carriers that don’t have service out of Mobile today.”

Via currently flies from Mobile Regional Airport to Orlando-Sanford four days per week on 50-seat Embraer jets.

The master plan is currently out for bid, Curry said.

“We expect to have a list of firms soon with a selection by the end of the year,” he said. “It’ll take a year to a year and a half to complete.”

Once low-cost carriers get settled at Brookley, Curry said, the MAA may build a second terminal for larger, more traditional carriers.

A June report found that a move of commercial flights to Brookley from Mobile Regional was feasible. Among other things, the Mobile Metropolitan Airport System Study found it would be more cost effective to move commercial service to the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley than to increase access through infrastructure at Bates Field in West Mobile.

The study also pointed to a number of other positive factors, including Brookley being “geographically better positioned to attract additional air service due to its proximity to downtown and ability to attract a larger share of the airport’s catchment area.”

The current airport only attracts about half of its catchment area, with passengers heading to airports in Pensacola and Gulfport. A move downtown could also open the airport closer to 138,000 potential customers.

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About The Author

Dale Liesch

Dale Liesch

Dale Liesch has been a reporter at Lagniappe since February 2014. He covers all aspects of the city of Mobile, including the mayor, City Council, the Mobile Housing Board of Commissioners, GulfQuest National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico and others. He studied journalism at The University of Alabama and graduated in 2007. He came to Lagniappe, after several years in the newspaper industry. He achieved the position of news editor at The Alexander City Outlook before moving to Virginia and then subsequently moving back a few years later. He has a number of Alabama and Virginia Press association awards to his name. He grew up in the wilderness of Baldwin County, among several different varieties of animals including: dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, a horse and an angry goat. He now lives in the Oakleigh neighborhood of Mobile with his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Joan. The family currently has no goats, angry or otherwise, but is ruled by the whims of two very energetic dogs.

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