Longtime residents, city leaders, and historians alike are expressing sadness over Friday’s fire that all but completely destroyed the main building at the Monmouth Municipal Airport.
Monmouth Mayor Rod Davies says the airport is as important for its history as the oldest-operating airport in the State of Illinois, as it is a local economic driver — an airport agricultural officials and others use.
Davies tells WGIL he’s optimistic the airport will reopen sooner rather than later, since runway lights and navigational equipment still work.
“The runway lighting and navigational aides — that’s all still operational, and the airport beacon,” says Davies. “That piece of the airport is still operational. Hopefully our ag flyers will be able to continue to fly out of here; athough, that piece of it is probably about done for the year. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep going, and not be inconvenienced too long.”
Davies says he was just in Springfield talking with state leaders about plans that would have seen an additional hanger built on site later next year. He says he hopes those plans can be moved up now.
Meanwhile, a Monmouth alderman was one of the people who lost a plane in the fire.
Ward 2 Alderman Brian Daw is a pilot, and past president of the Monmouth Flying Club, and tells WGIL Friday’s fire hurt him, not just because his plane is a loss.
“Also, we had the Monmouth Flying Club plane based here,” says Daw. “[It is] a non-profit organization providing low-cost flying instruction to students in the area. Of course, we lost our plane there. So, we’ve got to kind of look forward and try to figure out what we’re going to do going forward here.”
Eight planes in total were destroyed because of the fire. But Daw and Monmouth Mayor Rod Davies helped move two planes out of the part of the hangar that sustained the least damage because of the fire.
