Air medical service eyes city airport

Published 5:31 pm Saturday, October 26, 2013

An air medical service that would provide flights to Vidant Health is looking to locate at Warren Field Airport.

The Washington City Council is scheduled to consider authorizing the mayor to sign an assignment and assumption of a ground-site lease during its meeting Monday. The council also will consider a proposal by Metro Aviation Inc. to also serve as the airport’s nonexclusive fixed-base operator.

The lease and other related agreements would be between the city, Metro Aviation and Craig Goess, who currently has a hangar ground-site lease with the city. The terms of the master lease would remain the same, with the exception of the new scope of operations. The lease expires in 2034. The annual rental is $3,456.

Metro Aviation is based in Shreveport, La. It began in 1982 as a helicopter charter, flight training and flight maintenance operation. It entered the air medical service began in November 1983 when it entered into an agreement to provide helicopter ambulance service for Schumpert Medical Center in Shreveport.

Metro Aviation has added Vidant Medical Transport to its family. Vidant Medical Transport will transition from its previous operator to Metro Aviation on Friday.

The council also is scheduled to consider authorizing the city manager to sign a five-year agreement for Skydive Little Washington LLC to operate a jump school at the airport.

John Hayes and Ingrid Stephan met with the Airport Advisory Board to answer questions about the jump school. The board recommends they be allowed to operate the jump school out of the terminal annex building, for now. The school’s drop zone would be the overflowing parking lot at the McConnell Sports Complex on Airport Road.

The jump school would pay annual rent of $4,800, with a provision for an annual increase in rent included in the agreement. It will pay a $5 fee for each tandem jump made by customers or a $3 fee for every non-tandem jump made by customers.

The council meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Council Chambers in the Municipal Building, 102 E. Second St. To view the council’s agenda for a specific meeting, visit the city’s website at www.washingtonnc.gov, click “Government” then “City Council” heading, then click “Meeting Agendas” on the menu to the right. Then click on the date for the appropriate agenda.

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.