CHADRON - A retired Air Force sergeant from Colorado has signed on as the Fixed

Base Operator and Airport Operations Supervisor for the Chadron

Municipal Airport.

The Chadron City Council unanimously approved a five-year contract with Mark Hutton's A&M Aviation of Burlington, Colo., as the airport's new fixed-base operator, a position that has been open for more than a year after the move of Les and Donna Mittleider's L&D Aero to Rapid City, S.D.

Hutton said after the meeting Monday that aviation is a fast-changing business,

but that he sees opportunity, particularly in rural aviation.

"I'm an aviation person," he said. "There's opportunity. It's there, so I thought

I'd take advantage of it."

Hutton said he was optimistic about the future of aviation in smaller communities.

"The future of aviation is not going to be going from here to DIA (Denver International Airport). It's going to be going to your local airport and using an airplane, …" he said. "Instead of using feeder aircraft, it's going to be microjets."

Hutton, a rural Colorado native who served at Offutt Air Force Base and

in Hawaii during his 20 years in the Air Force, said he will begin by

offering aircraft maintenance and fuel sales, and he plans to expand to

aircraft rental and flight instruction fairly soon.

Charter service will be a longer-term project, in part because of the stringent Federal Aviation Adminstration rules governing charter operations, he said.

The trend of older FBOs retiring from rural airports is going on throughout the country, which presents challenges, Hutton said. "Youth is the future of aviation. We need a concerted effort to get youth more involved."

Chadron has been actively seeking a fixed-base operator for some time, and officials have talked about the importance of a well-equipped airport to the community's economic development. The city recently completed installation of a new "fuel farm" system with self-service pumps for aviation gas and jet fuel.

Hutton said he hopes to attract customers for jet fuel, who are quite price conscious and need hundreds of gallons when refueling. The Chadron airport has the potential to attract those customers because it has runways that are long enough and can accommodate the weight of small jets and commercial aircraft, Hutton said.

Among Hutton's other duties will be maintaining the runway and airport perimeter, mowing grass and removing snow, city manager Sandy Powell said. Hutton said he will perform some of the aircraft mechanic and maintenance work himself, including FAA annual and 100-hour inspections, and he plans to employ one full-time and one part-time employee initially.

"I'm really excited to get a FBO here again," said council member John Gamby, a pilot and aircraft owner.

In another airport-related item, the council approved an agreement with the Nebraska Department of Aviation for a grant application for a friction meter to use at the airport. The friction meter measures runway conditions to determine if they are hazardous for stopping, public works superintendent Milo Rust said. Unlike the current system, in which a person assigns a rating of good, fair or poor, the device gives a numerical readout of the stopping conditions, he said.

"We are getting asked for it (a numerical reading) more often," said Terri Haynes, station manager for Great Lakes Aviation, who has also been acting as airport operations supervisor.

The agreement allows the Nebraska Department of Aviation to act as Chadron's agent in applying for a federal matching grant to buy the friction meter. The federal government would pay 90 percent of the cost, with the state and city splitting the balance.