October 13, 2009

Contact:

Reed Hollinshead

Public Information Specialist 

(208) 334-8881 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REMINDER: Emmett flyover ceremony Wednesday (Oct. 14) to celebrate runway improvements

EMMETT - Major reconstruction of the runway at the Emmett Municipal Airport will be celebrated with a flyover at the site (Chuck Sawyer Field) at 11 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 14). Curtiss P-40s will do the flyover, the same aircraft Col. Sawyer was flying when he was forced down in Tibet in World War II. Sawyer trekked 200 miles on foot to avoid capture.

The ceremony will be emceed by Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little, former Emmett senator. The Idaho Transportation Department will join Emmett's mayor, city and county officials, district legislators, and local pilots in the ceremony, held at 2102 Sales Yard Road in Emmett.

A small airport grant from the ITD Division of Aeronautics, supplemented with a city/county match, funded the $600,000 improvements. The 55-feet-wide, 3,500-feet-long runway was completely torn out and replaced, with the surface augmented to combat soft clay beneath the surface. The airport's taxiway also was reconstructed in 2006.

The airport was built in the early 1940s as an Army Air Corps civilian pilot training facility.

For more information regarding the reconstruction or the event, please contact city grant writer Tom Hoppell at 919-1771.

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