University Wants To Build Satellite Campus Where IGX Sits

The fate of Horace Williams Airport in Chapel Hill, NC rests squarely on the leaders of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill... and it looks like they don't want it, says state House Speaker Joe Hackney.

UNC officials want instead to put a 250-acre satellite campus there, called Carolina North. According to Hackney, state lawmakers would prefer to keep the UNC medical school's Med Air but it will likely be moved to another airfield.

"That's up to the university, and I don't think that's their plan," he said.

He said the airport, which is about 70 years old, will probably close no matter what a legislative oversight subcommittee decides.

That subcommittee will discuss where to relocate the air ambulance - some time. Hackney couldn't pinpoint a specific timeframe as to when that might happen.

The subcommittee did recommend the next committee study "whether the ... airport is more valuable continuing to operate as an airport or being developed as part of Carolina North."

UNC-CH plans to build a hangar at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Area Health Education Centers' doctors oppose the plan, saying the commute would be too much and might cause them to drop out of the Air Med program.

Doctors, pilots and university officials were invited to speak to the subcommittee in June about the issue.

Although several town officials, the chamber of commerce and university trustees all say the airport should be closed, there are still a few that say otherwise.

Hackney's law partner Bob Epting is one of about two dozen pilots who keep a plane at IGX.

"There's a whole community of aviation enthusiasts who are interested in the issue, but I think the legislature's interested mostly from the point of view of AHEC," Hackney said. "[Epting] does use [the airport]. I have no connection one way or the other, but he's already made other arrangements in the event of the closure."

Hackney believes the motives behind legislators' discussing the airport is to protect AHEC, not to serve the interests of private pilots. This is unfortunate, since its private pilots who account for about 75 percent of flights at the airport, according to university and Federal Aviation Administration data.

FMI: www.airport.unc.edu, www.joehackney.com