Kent State Airport Unaffected by Hiring Freeze

Although a was recently instituted at Kent State University, the airport  owned by Kent State on Kent Road in Stow is unlikely to feel the chill.

The site of Stow's annual Aviation Heritage Fair, currently has more than 90 faculty and staff, not all of whom are university employees. Operation of the airport is contracted out to Al Beckwith Leasing Co. and Commercial Aviation Corporation.

In an e-mail last month to all university faculty and staff, Kent State President Lester Lefton stated that a projected shortfall in the state budget would lead to “” for higher education, necessitating “contingency planning” that involved immediate, university-wide hiring restrictions.

“If there are positions at the airport that need to be filled, there are waivers in place for any mission-critical positions,” said Dr. I. Richmond Nettey, associate dean of Aeronautics in the Kent State University College of Technology.

Nettey, a Stow resident, said the College Tech Prep Academy also would be unaffected by the hiring freeze. is among the schools participating in the prep academy with the Aeronautics Division at Kent State.

Al Beckwith, whose company contracts operation of the airport from the university, said a recent decrease in use of the airport is a result of the economic downturn. He estimates about a quarter of airport traffic is from Stow pilots, who fly both for business and pleasure.

“Right now, our business is very poor because of the recession. We do not have the customer base we had two to three years ago,” Beckwith said.

Mike Weddle, Stow's economic development coordinator, said the university airport does not play a large role in Stow's economy.

“There may be some commercial uses, but to my knowledge we don’t have a large constituency that is using Kent State University Airport as a base,” Weddle said.