Manassas airport eases space requirements for flight schools

Manassas Airport officials this month voted to make some key changes at Virginia’s largest municipal airfield.

First, the airport is working to shorten the list of pilots’ names on a list to rent hangar space at the airport. A total of 160 people are waiting for a covered space to store their planes at the airport as of June 16. On average, it’s a two to three-year wait, said Richard Allabaugh, airport spokesman.

The airport owns and manages nearly 200 156 hangar spaces, and nearly half all are currently rented out.

Under the old policy revised in 2018, when a new space became available, the airport would call the next person on the list and give them five business days to return their call before moving onto the next person on the list.

If they didn’t call back, they removed it from the list. Under the new policy, when the airport calls someone on the list, they now have just five days — weekend days included — to call back.

“When it was five business days, we also had to factor in holidays and weekends, and that extended the amount of time someone had to call back, and it could become a lengthy process,” said Allabaugh in an interview with Potomac Local News.

There’s no charge to be on the waiting list. However, the airport does collect a deposit when someone from the list agrees to rent a hangar. The amount is the first month’s rent, which ranges between $335 to $1,600, depending upon the size of the hangar is rented, said Allabaugh.

Meanwhile, the airport lowered the amount of required office space flight schools located at the airport. The Manassas Regional Airport Commission voted and reduced the space requirement from 2,100 square feet to just 600.

As it stands, there six flight schools that operate at the Manassas Regional Airport. Flight schools visit the airport to conduct training but don’t have an office at the airport.

“Any business doing business at the airport must obtain a permit, but they don’t have to have an office at the airport,” said Allabaugh.

Bringing in new pilots is important to the aviation industry, adds Allabaugh. In addition, the changes aim to make it fairer to flight schools, which has seen many of their students transition to learning remotely from home since the consent of the coronavirus pandemic.

“You need pilots to be trained to fly aircraft,” said Allabaugh. “Over the past year, we’ve found people have been [training as frequently as they did before the pandemic].”