North Central Airport is poised to substantially increase its volume of business and corporate air traffic in coming years.
The 663-acre airport, located in Smithfield at the town’s border with Lincoln, currently logs about 30,000 annual takeoffs and landings on its two runways – the longer of which is 5,000 feet. The airport accommodates general aviation aircraft as small as single jet airplanes and as large as medium-sized corporate jets, according to Michael Mini, manager of planning for the R.I. Airport Corporation.
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A sweeping aviation system plan for the state completed in 2004 by the airport corporation concluded that North Central Airport would not open up to commercial air traffic in the future. Rather, the plan reaffirmed the airport’s role as a facility ideally suited to serving private and corporate aircraft, Mini said.
“North Central is ideal as a general aviation reliever airport, along with Quonset [Airport],” Mini said. “Their job is to provide facilities that take pressure off T.F. Green Airport, allowing Green to more efficiently and safely accommodate commercial traffic.”
North Central Airport’s location lends itself to the corporate traveler, Mini said. The airport is a relatively short distance from Providence and minutes away from Fidelity Investments’ sprawling campus in Smithfield. It is also easily accessible from Routes 116, 7 and 146.
In particular, business traffic could increase at North Central along with a general trend in the aviation industry toward the use of small, light aircraft for corporate air travel, Mini said. This new breed of jets, which requires less runway length than traditional mid-sized jets, are expected to increasingly dominate corporate air travel, he said.
Anticipating an increase in corporate air traffic at North Central, in September a private developer opened a new facility at the airport to repair and service corporate jets.
AeroServ Express is a Federal Aviation Administration-approved repair station specializing in maintenance on Raytheon Hawker jets, Cessna Citation jets and Lear jets.
The business also repairs, installs, upgrades and recertifies navigational and radio equipment for aircraft. In addition to servicing and maintaining jets, AeroServ Express’ hangar at North Central provides corporate catering, car rentals, a pilot’s lounge and other amenities for the corporate client, AeroServ Express Vice President and General Manager Jeff Soules said.
AeroServ Express brass decided to create an operation at North Central Airport after conducting research that predicted a burst of corporate air travel in Southern New England in the coming years, Soules said. At least 120 new corporate jets are expected to begin operating in the region. At the same time, Fidelity is planning to increase its work force in Smithfield by several hundred employees, he said.
“Rhode Island really didn’t have a facility to house, do maintenance on and service corporate jets,” Soules said. “There was nothing like it between Hanscom Field in the Boston area and Connecticut. That’s why we built our operation at North Central, to hopefully bring a spark to the airport and Northern Rhode Island with the corporate market.”
Other improvements have recently occurred or are slated for North Central Airport.
Additional lighting, pedestrian gates and a new chain-link fence were installed at the airport to improve its security in the wake of 9/11, Mini said.
The shorter of North Central’s two runways was repaved in 2004, and its longer runway is scheduled to be repaved next year, according to Mini. That rehabilitation will include improvements to the safety areas at the beginning and end of the runway, he said.
In the next few years, the state airport corporation plans to complete a general aviation airport vegetation plan for North Central, Mini said. The study will result in recommendations for pruning and removing trees and other vegetation in the airport’s vicinity to protect its airspace, he said.
General upgrades to the 55-year-old airport’s facilities are ongoing, and include replacement of the main terminal’s windows and a scheduled renovation of the customer hangar, which houses about 25 general aviation aircraft, Mini said.
