В аэропорту северо-восточного Вайоминга возобновились регулярные сервисные работы для частных и коммерческих самолетов

The Northeast Wyoming Regional Airport once again has maintenance services available for private pilots and commercial aircraft. Last month, the Campbell County Commissioners approved a contract with Wingman Aviation Services to provide maintenance at the airport. “When’s the last time we had a maintenance program at the airport?” asked Commission Chairman Bob Jordan. “Full time maintenance was back when Flightline had it,” Airport Director Todd Chatfield said, referring to the previous FBO. “When GateOne took over there was sporadic maintenance there.” In May 2025, the airport became the fixed base operator following a fallout between the airport and GateOne, which had been the FBO since 2023. The airport had to hire several new employees to keep things going, and it has been doing this under the name Thunder Basin Aviation. The airport board alleged GateOne was not fulfilling its contracted duties as the FBO, including providing maintenance. The two parties are currently involved in a lawsuit. Wingman Aviation will pay the airport $2,000 per month to lease hangar space for its operations. And starting in January, it will pay the airport 3% of its monthly gross receipts, which will be capped at $3,000 per month. The airport board formed a committee to find a new company for maintenance. A few companies expressed interest, but when the committee sent out a request for proposals, Wingman was the only company to submit information, Chatfield said. Wingman will do maintenance on private planes, but “in our minimum standards, it says whoever has the maintenance on the field will be available for the commercial flights,” Chatfield said. He added that this shouldn’t be a problem, since Wingman already does contract maintenance work on SkyWest aircraft in a few airports in Wyoming. “They can do annuals, fix a flat tire, any of the maintenance that we’ve ever really had in Gillette,” Chatfield said. Meanwhile, the number of people flying on the commercial flights has skyrocketed ever since commercial air service came back after being shut down for a few weeks for a major runway construction project. But June, July and August each had more than 6,000 passengers each, with traffic peaking in August with 6,319 passengers. In 2025, the busiest month was May with 5,460 passengers. Chatfield said the move to three flights on some days has helped drive up traffic, as has the switch from the CRJ200 to the CRJ550. It’s a 70-passenger plane, but 20 seats have been taken out so that there’s more room for luggage. It also offers first class and business class, Chatfield said. The airport still needs to find a company willing to be the fixed-base operator. The county is helping the airport board put together a request for proposals, and Chatfield said he’s hopeful they’ll “get something that works for the county, the airport and the flying public.” But he noted that the decision won’t be rushed. “We want to make sure we take our time and get somebody that’s good and can do everything we’re requiring…we want to make sure we do it right,” he said. “We want to make sure that they know what we want…so we know they can actually handle the job so we don’t have this situation in the future.”