Mankato airport to see upgrades

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - The next generation of pilots are ready to take to the sky, the Mankato Regional Airport hosted this year’s Business Aviation Day Thursday.

The event is akin to a job fair, with twenty businesses from around the aviation industry welcoming more than 200 students, talking about every kind of job in the industry, from commercial flying to administration to plane insurance.

The area touts one of the largest aviation programs in the state, and that activity is reflected in the number of student-flown flights coming through the airport.

“The university here is very busy and they have a very robust program for professional pilot students and for management students. When we hear about the numbers of the students that are here, the number of flight operations that are taking place at the airport with university students the numbers are just off the charts,” said Jessica Belcher, organizer of the event.

The city touts the airport as the second busiest airport in Minnesota, the busiest without an air traffic control tower.

That lack of a tower is something that the city is working to remedy, as the city revealed a new proposed design for their ongoing Air Traffic Control Tower Project.

That project is expected to see a tower built at the airport by early 2027, and the city says that it’s a necessary safety upgrade given the activity at the airport.

“Because it is the second busiest airport, that brings safety concerns with it. And so while we’re trying to be very safe in the operations that we conduct, we conduct 150 operations a day, peaking out at about 260,” said Shawn Schloesser, transportation planner for the City of Mankato.

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