Lincoln Journal
Thursday, June 27, 2002

Changes due at Hanscom Air Field

By BARBARA FORSTER
CORRESPONDENT

On June 18, the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission learned first-hand that businesses are changing at the air field. Massport representative Sara Arnold reported that Mercury Air Group has asked Massport to transfer its lease to Signature Flight Support, a fixed-based operator at Logan Airport that also supplies fuel, maintenance and aircraft services.

Mercury, owned by Raytheon until 1997, was founded in 1956 by three members of the legendary American Group Flying Tigers.

In 1999 Mercury built a 36,000-square-foot hangar next to its terminal center. The building, which included 4,000 square feet of office space for Mercury customers, almost double the amount of space in the original hangar, a sheet-metal structure built for the Air Force around 1947.

Headquartered in Orlando, Fla., Signature has 48 locations around the world including four in Europe and one in Hong Kong. The company was founded in 1992 with the merger of Butler Aviation and Page Avjet Corp. Signature is wholly owned by BBA Group PLC, a diversified engineering and manufacturing organization with companies that provide products and services to the aviation, automotive, light rail, and industrial textile markets.

Jet activity up

April and May 2002 were busy months for jet aircraft at Hanscom Air Field with business jet activity leaping 55.4 percent and 63.6 percent in each of those months respectively. Last year, jets accounted for 1,786 operations in April, 1,767 in May. This year those numbers went up to 2,776 and 2,891.

"It’s not really all new business," said HFAC member Frank Diglio of Jet Aviation. "A lot of companies have opened the airplanes to different levels of management."

Currently, corporate jets are more convenient and time-saving than commercial flights, added Diglio, "especially when you have to get to the airport two hours before your flight."

Night activity — operations between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. — was another upwardly mobile number, going from 158 and 166 in May and April 2001 to this year’s 187 and 188.

The number of total operations between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., however, decreased 3.9 percent and 5.5 percent in April and May 2002. Noise complaints went down, too, from 899 to 822. Figures, which could reflect community reaction to the military Air Show, were not available for June 2002.

Summer hiatus

HFAC is taking a summer hiatus and plans to resume meeting in September. The almost-unanimous decision — Massport representatives remained silent on the issue — occurred after Moll polled the commission and the half-dozen or so community residents at the meeting.

For many years, HFAC met September through June; year-round meetings were initiated a couple years ago.

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