By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — If there’s ever an emergency at the Warsaw Municipal Airport, Manager Nick King wants to have a plan on how to handle it.

Back during the Covid pandemic, King told the Board of Aviation Commissioners at their meeting Tuesday, Aug. 8, he reached out to the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory and has been working with Battalion Chief Aaron Bolinger for the past 18 months to put together an airport emergency plan.

“This is more pre-planning than it is anything else,” he said.

The document is 136 pages, but it isn’t the final draft as there are some typos and formatting errors to correct.

“Once this has been finalized, proofread and we move forward with it, this is something that both the airport board and the fire territory would adopt, and it will give us a very clear plan and path if there ever is an incident or an accident at the airport – what is the response and how do we respond to that,” King stated.

He gave the board a couple examples of what kind of emergencies might occur at the airport and how they might be handled.

“I went to the professionals and said, ‘How do you want to put this document together?’ They reached out to a lot of different airports and got their FAA-approved plans. We are not going to make ours FAA-approved. We’re just going to have a local plan and adopt it here with our first responders,” King said. “Since we do not have commercial air carrier services, we do not need an FAA-approved document.”

King said it is an incredibly time-consuming and expensive endeavor to get an FAA-approved airport emergency plan.

“Having one puts us in a better place than where we are now. I do not believe we need a full FAA-approved plan. That could cost us a quarter of a million or more just in putting that together with all the consultant fees and everything,” he stated, adding that he just wanted to make the board aware that they were working on that.

Through that process, King said, Fire Chief Brian Mayo visited the airport, took a tour and checked out all the equipment the airport has. He requested that the hangars be renumbered because currently there’s no “true rhyme or reason” why they’re numbered as they are. King said some of the areas of the airport go from 6 to 8 to 7 to 16 to 13 to 18 to 25.

Mayo told King he wasn’t concerned if there was a fire because the firefighters will go where the smoke is. He was more concerned about finding a hangar if someone was having a medical emergency.

“He would really like the airport to consider renumbering our hangars, coming up with a structured system. They can help us with that. And then having a standard system of where we place those hangar numbers on the buildings,” King said.

Board President Jay Rigdon said that sounded like an intern project to him. King said the interns, who start Monday, might start the project, but there was a lot to consider with the project and he just wanted to present it to the board.

Finally, King presented a marketing proposal to the board.

An intern last year started a social media presence for the airport.

“He did a great job with the foundation, but we just need more finesse and a more structured plan with getting our name and our story out to the public,” King said.

The airport had a pancake and sausage breakfast about a month ago, which King called a resounding success with over 70 people fly in just for it, and participants wanted to tag the Warsaw Airport on their social media. However, there’s another Warsaw Airport page and King said they don’t know who owns it and haven’t been able to take over the page.

King said they’ve talked with Orange Marketing Group, who runs the city’s social media page and helps with marketing, and he would like to work with them on the airport’s social media.

The proposal Orange Marketing Group gave to the airport was for $850 a month for a one-year contract. That will take care of all of the airport’s social media. Orange Marketing will put together a plan and explain to the airport staff what kind of posts they need to be doing, as well as help build everything on social media for the airport.

There also will be a logo and branding development for the airport for a flat rate of $1,500. King said the airport’s current logo is at least 30 years old.

“I would really like to brand the airport and really move us into the 21st century. We are making a lot of positive changes, and I would really like to look at some ideas for a new logo to show the public we are moving forward and there’s a lot of really fun, exciting changes coming. I think part of that comes with a new logo and branding of the airport,” King said.

Mayor Joe Thallemer told the board the Common Council discussed the logo and branding at their meeting Monday night and they gave their thumbs up to it.

“They saw the value of it,” he said, with the airport being a gateway to the city for a lot of folks. “After what we went through this last year, people need to understand what we do, and we need to get that message out.”

He said the city works with Orange Marketing Group, too.

Board member Gene Zale said he was for it and made the motion to approve the one-year contract, logo and branding.