Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer, right, shakes Gene Zale’s hand before swearing him in at Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at Warsaw City Hall. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — Warsaw Municipal Airport is working on informing people of its new ramp fees.

Airport Manager Nick King provided an update to the Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners on the change at its meeting Tuesday, Jan. 11, at Warsaw City Hall.

The board had approved establishing the fees at its last meeting in December. The fees are for those who use the airport’s services such as getting coffee or using a transport service for food. Alternately, instead of paying fees, those using the extra services at the airport can opt to purchase fuel from it.

“They are posted at the airport,” said King of the fees. “We’ve had some issues with holidays of updating all the different websites. We don’t just have one website we advertise on and so working with all the different companies is just taking us a little bit of time to update that information and so we are giving the customer the benefit of the doubt right now. To date, we’ve not had a customer that’s been to the airport that hasn’t bought fuel that would have otherwise paid a facility fee, so that is nice.”

“Hopefully in the next week or two, we can have all those updates completely done and then have that formally in effect,” he said. “The other thing we have been doing is calling some of our larger customers that do frequent the airport … just so that they can update their records with our new facility fees, so they’re aware of that.”

The fees are based on different types of aircraft. For example, for a multi-engine piston, there will be a $25 ramp fee, which will be waived if the plane purchases at least 25 gallons of fuel.

The rest of the rates are: Turboprop aircraft, $50 ramp fee or 50 gallons of fuel; small jets, $100 or 100 gallons; mid jets, $150 ramp or 150 gallons; and large jets, $200 ramp or 200 gallons.

In other business:

• Mayor Joe Thallemer swore in Gene Zale for another term on the board. Zale is the longest-serving member on the board, having served since 1980.
• The board agreed to keep its current officers with Jay Rigdon serving as president, John Yingling as vice president and Zale as secretary.
• The board also had a moment of silence at the start of the meeting for Karen Sheetz, a former manager of the airport who passed away on Saturday, Jan. 1.

The board’s next meeting is 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 8, at city hall.