Save Horrace Williams Airport (KIGX)

SkyDog58

SkyDog58

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My wife and I flew over to Horrace Williams (IGX) in Chapel Hill today to meet my brother and his wife, who live in Raleigh. We met for lunch and a tour of UNC where she went to school. We had a great time. However, the airport is facing imminent closure because UNC wants to repurpose the land. Part of their reasoning is that the airport isn’t making enough money to justify its continuing existence.

I’ve read a few articles over the past couple years about the possible closure and that was one of the things that motivated the trip today besides visiting my brother. I just wanted to fly there before it closed and to up their numbers just a bit. I also bought fuel.

They have an online petition fighting the closure on change.org so I went there and signed it. I’d encourage anyone who cares about the continuing loss of small GA airports to do the same. And those who live and fly in NC really need to pay a visit there in the immediate future to support them before it really is too late.

Here is the link to the petition.

Here is an AOPA article about it.

I think it is an airport that is well worth saving.
 
In ten years AOPA couldn’t find one bizjet owner to fly the UNC leadership on annual “fact finding” missions to Aruba out of that airport?

Sheesh. They’re slipping.
 
The reason they aren’t making any money is that the university has been driving everyone off for 20 years. Who wants to keep a plane there or start an aviation business If the university keeps talking about closing the field?
 
When I moved to the Triangle 20 years ago, that looked like the airport we wanted to move near. We immediately got wind of some change afoot which reminded us of NJ where we were losing an airport a month.

The good news is that practically all of the surrounding airports have been significantly upgraded in the intervening years, as have many other NC airports. NC is a great place for GA airports. KIGX has had all improvements choked off over the same period. UNC seems to have moved some/all their GA operations to RDU. I don't know the who, why or what fors but it looks like a lost cause to me.

I wish they had an LPV IAP with a DH - it's one of my let down options for 8NC8.
 
Bill Watson said:
snip ... but it looks like a lost cause to me.
....
Click to expand...

Oh, I agree it looks like a lost cause and I am probably just pizzing in the wind and I am way late to the battle but my one visit to the airport and seeing what is happening to this airport that is so convenient to the town and university just got under my skin. But as both an outsider and a johnny come lately, I doubt if my opinion matters much to anyone involved in the decision making.
 
"Henry Horace Williams (1858–1940) was a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1890 to 1940. From 1921 to 1935 he was a Kenan Professor of philosophy at UNC, and from 1936-1940 he was a Professor Emeritus. After being invited to teach at UNC, he became the first chair of the Mental and Moral Sciences Department, which is today better known as the Department of Philosophy.

His many interests were varied, yet his especial focus was logic and its humanistic aspects and evolution. He was an owner of the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, NC, where The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill is headquartered, beginning in 1897. Horace died in 1940 - nearing death, Horace donated his home and outlying properties to UNC's Philosophy Department. This outlying property eventually became the well-known Horace Williams Airport in Chapel Hill."

Helps to know a little about the man that has an airport named after him.
 
Like it or not, many universities today are being run like businesses: the different schools and functions in the university are evaluated by how much money they bring in (from tuition, research grants, alumni contributions, other revenues) and how much they cost to operate. In some universities, each school is charged or contributes to the overall university. Not all schools, but many. It's part of the reason that administrative and fund-raising salaries are high and instructor salaries are kept down. And athletics contribute a lot bot revenue wise and publicity wise.

Again, not all schools.

As government contribution to the state schools gets reduced, there is even more pressure on the administration.

So the fact that UNC seeks to shut down the airport is no real surprise. It's not a core business function of the university and likely doesn't contribute enough relative to what could occupy the land.
 
When we fly in to Chapel Hill to visit my wife's brother, that's our field of choice if he's going to pick us up. If we need a rental car & hotel we'll go to RDU and stay in the nearby facilities.

I'll always remember the time we were on short final @ IGX (having announced our position) when a Mooney taxiied out to take off on the same runway, going the opposite direction right towards us (!!)

I was about ready to go around when he came on the radio and said he'd wait for us to land before he'd leave...
 
wsuffa said:
Like it or not, many universities today are being run like businesses:..
Click to expand...

Well, businesses where administrative costs have quadrupled in a couple of decades. Any business without guaranteed government loans backing that, would be closing their doors.
 
ktup-flyer said:
It's a scam
Click to expand...

Hmm scam usually implies people don’t get any value for the money spent. Some do, some don’t. So I wouldn’t go so far as to say “scam”, but the debt bubble the education funding policies and resulting unnecessary explosion in administrative costs, has formed... isn’t good.

The inflationary price tags also make it difficult for people to simply work their way through school without debt.

It’s a debt spiral we will all pay for to keep university admins in the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.

This, my suggestion of flying them somewhere nice on a corporate jet to save the airport. They believe they’re that important and worth it. Why not leverage that? :)
 
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