Theresa Swope

In just over a year, the Bay Minette Municipal Airport has risen from being 123rd of 126 Alabama airports in volume of business to the busiest airport in Alabama.

“We are now busier than Mobile Regional, Mobile Downtown, Fairhope or Gulf Shores airports,” James “Rock” Rockhill, co-owner of Bay Minette Aviation said.

Rockhill said the airport is close to 45 years old, but he and partner George Sigler have only been running it since July of 2007.

“George and I were looking for a  location to put in a flight school, but (an airport) that wasn’t too busy,” Rockhill said. “I’d flown over Pensacola, Gulf Shores and other area airports, then I flew over Bay Minette and I saw this big runway and big ramps and no airplanes.”

Rockhill said he landed at the airport and saw that it was abandoned. “It had been sitting vacant for a couple of years,” Sigler said.

Rockhill said he talked to Joe Clark at the hangar and got the information he needed. The hangar was private property, but it was on city property, so any business had to go through the city.

“When we approached the mayor about leasing the land for our flight school, he asked if we would be interested in running the airport,” Rockhill said. He said when they first took over, the city was selling maybe 1,300 gallons of airplane fuel in a six-month period. “Now, we sell that before lunchtime,” Rockhill said.

The following October, Sky Warrior, the men’s flight training school, was awarded a contract to train Naval air students. The school saw close to 300 cadets that first year and each class gets a bit bigger. “We probably have about 60 students in this class,” Rockhill said.

He said the school is not just for military

students, though, noting that Bay Minette Mayor Sonny Dobbins’ wife is getting ready to take lessons, and already a Baldwin County Sheriff’s deputy, a doctor and a plumber are going through the course.

“It’s open to anyone who is interested in learning to fly,” Rockhill said.

The flight school, the first ever at this airport, is also a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Licensed Testing Center. Because of this, the school may soon offer courses through Faulkner State Community College.

“We’re going to be meeting with the academic leaders at Faulkner to discuss a pilot course and mechanics course,” Sigler said. He said students would take the lecture part of the course at the school and then come out to the airport for flight lessons and air time, or to learn hands on airplane mechanics under a certified mechanic.

“When they’re done, they will be a certified FAA mechanic or a certified- flight instructor,” Sigler said. “That’s one of our long-range goals.”

Rockhill said the flight course at Faulkner would actually serve a dual purpose, leading to students who are trained flight instructors able to earn a good salary when they graduate and providing instructors for the flight school.

“Most of these young kids are wanting to get that pilot’s license so they can go work for an airline, but they have to have a few hundred hours of experience before the airlines will hire them,” Rockhill said. “They can come out here as an instructor, get the experience they need while another class is coming through, so that when they get a job and move on, there is another class of instructors coming in. We’ll always have a pool of flight instructors to teach the cadets.”

He said the benefit is not only to the flight school, because these students graduating with FAA certifications will have much higher -paying jobs than their auto-mechanic counterparts.

In addition to the flight school, Rockhill and Sigler own and operate Bay Minette Aviation Inc. and Blue Horizon Aviation Inc.

Bay Minette Aviation is the Fixed Base Operation Center,  serving as the command center for the airport. “We are the main source of city aviation fuel-sales revenue, we recently attained the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) Government fuel contract. We serve as a direct community support for the city’s small businesses, and we are host to the Bay Minette Annual Air Expo,” Rockhill said.

As a recipient of the government fuel contract, the airport serves as a refueling station for all government air vehicles, from military planes - including all branches of the military - to state vehicles such as State Troopers and dignitary planes.

All of these people coming in to the airport mean more business for city businesses, especially restaurants. We probably average 200 patrons per month, and that’s just the military guys, that doesn’t include our students or civilians.

The Air Expo, coming Nov. 1, is an annual event that began last year and features older planes, acrobatic planes and military planes performing flyovers and stunts. The event is free and open to the public.

The third business, Blue Horizon Aviation, is a full-service aircraft maintenance operation that offers periodic, routine and unscheduled aircraft maintenance.