Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport has been busy preparing for the Republican National Convention in July and with that will come an influx of private jets — about 200 of them.
So, what does an airport do with all those jets that transport all these very important people?
The airport expects the around 200 or more private aircraft to arrive at the airport and drop off attendees. While some will leave after, many have signaled they’ll be parking their jets at the airport throughout the four-day event, said Harold Mester, director of public affairs and marketing at the airport.
“We are expecting a significant number of private aircraft to come into the airport,” Mester said. “We do have plans in place to park a significant portion of those aircraft.”
To accommodate the additional aircraft, the airport plans to close two of its smaller, mostly unused runways and use them for parking. Mester said they expect to be able to accommodate all the planes that they park, but it will be “full and quite busy.”
The airport’s preparations have involved consulting with officials at other airports that have hosted the convention and using that information to help plan their logistics.
“We’re not going to have to turn anyone away, based on what we’ve seen from other airports,” Mester said.
The airport works with three fixed base operators, otherwise known as FBOs or businesses that handle the airport’s private aircraft, Mester said. Among those are JetIn, Avflight and Signature Aviation. JetIn is Milwaukee-based, while the other two are national operators.
Avflight’s Darrin Everett, its senior regional manager, said the companies have been participating in biweekly meetings with airport officials to prepare for the convention. In June, he said those are expected to become weekly meetings.
“It’s going to be quite busy,” he said. “There will be a large influx.”
The company, which has about 25 employees at its Milwaukee office and has 23 domestic locations, has previous experience working political conventions, including working out of the Akron-Canton Airport for the 2016 Cleveland Republican National Convention.
Avflight’s preparations have centered around those meetings and its plans to bring in additional equipment and staff to bolster itself for the influx of work, he said.
“The big event is all about planning the thing and doing that and seeing how it shakes out,” Everett said. “Not everybody gets to do this, and so it’s kind of cool that Milwaukee (does.)”
Events that bring in private jets are not new to the Milwaukee airport, either.
It has experience in hosting large numbers of private jets, particularly around successful sporting events like the Milwaukee Bucks 2021 championship season, Mester said.
“We think the RNC will probably exceed what we’ve seen from sporting events,” he said.
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The private jet planning comes as the airport has started to promote itself ahead of the convention. Mester said the airport is running advertisements at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., encouraging people to use Mitchell for travel during the convention.
The convention should be a continuation of what’s been a strong start to the year for the airport, as passenger traffic on commercial flights has outpaced prior years.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport expects private jets for RNC
Source Agencies
