GEORGETOWN, Del. - Phase one of the four phase process to add an additional taxiway at the Delaware Coastal Airport is complete. This four part process looks to extend taxiway bravo, mirroring the existing taxiway to allow for larger aircrafts to navigate the grounds with ease.
Taxiway Bravo
Once finished, the new section will run parallel to the existing Taxiway B and is designed to accommodate larger aircraft that are increasingly traveling through the airport.
According to members of the Delaware Coastal Airport Advisory Committee, the expansion is necessary due to rising traffic levels. They say the current taxiway can no longer efficiently handle the growing volume of aircraft operations.
Taxiway bravo, facing towards where additional taxiway will sit.
"The taxiway we have no longer meets the standards. So it's difficult for larger airplanes to get up and down the runway because we don't have parallel taxiways." says Larry Kelly, a member of the Delaware Coastal Airport Advisory Committee.
Currently, the airport does not host passenger airline service, and there are no plans to change that, according to Airport Manager Bob Bryant.
"We would always love to have scheduled airline service at this airport," Bryant told CoastTV. "But the economic realities, our proximity to Philadelphia, Baltimore, even Washington, D.C. kind of make it difficult to romance an airline to want to drop a flight at Delaware Coastal Airport, only to fly what would probably be less than a 15-minute flight to a hub airport."