It is Master’s Week and one of the most important weeks in the local economy.
Even though we are thirty miles from The Augusta National, every hotel room is booked, every restaurant table is filled and our municipal airport (AIK) is host to an ever changing assortment of private jets.
A few of the bigger planes on the South end of the airport
To the best of my knowledge, there are four airports that reap a huge benefit from the corporate jets ferrying folks to Augusta: Bush Field (AGS), Daniel Field, (DNL), Thomson-McDuffie County Airport, (HQU) (all in Georgia) and Aiken Municipal Airport, (AIK)…and Aiken is the farthest away at 30.4 miles from the main gate at Magnolia Lane.
I was driving home from a meeting in Columbia yesterday and stopped briefly at Aiken Airport to take a few pictures….mostly smaller jets (relative term) but a few larger Gulfstreams also….
Looking out towards the main runway
The planes were parked a little differently than I remember them being last year…they seem to be more spread out….From what I could see, I counted forty three jets, but I know I did not see them all.
I recall back in 2000, I had to fly out to speak at a conference in Las Vegas and the organization flew me out of AGS…on the Thursday of Masters Week. I was shocked as it seemed that every inch of grass was covered, wing tip to wing tip with corporate jets….literally hundreds of them…it was very stunning and something I will always remember.
It is something you would never know/think about unless you lived here.
A Simple, Village Undertaker 