Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport Christens Newly Completed Runway

A cluster of men and women stood on a taxiway at the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport Friday, listening while Johnny Stewart received instructions from an air traffic controller.

Within minutes, Stewart had taken off in his Cessna 170B single-engine taildragger, piloting the first flight from the Lewiston airport’s rebuilt secondary runway.

“It was nice and smooth, as it should be after all that work,” he said of the runway surface when he landed.

The group on the taxiway included airport officials, along with employees from contractor Knife River and project designer T-O Engineering. They were gathered for a brief event that included a ribbon-cutting, but was closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Stewart, 81, of Lewiston, was selected to initiate the runway because of the many ways he has served his country and the community.

A retired U.S. Army captain and pilot who served in the Vietnam War, he volunteers for a group that flies patients to medical treatments free of charge.

Stewart is also among the private pilots who store their planes at the Lewiston airport who will benefit from the $7 million upgrade.

The 34-year-old runway had large cracks and holes that earned it a rating of poor, one category above failure, which requires closure, before the project began.

Its replacement has a new base and lights instead of reflectors to illuminate it at night. It is 4,750 feet long, 250 feet shorter than the old runway, to eliminate an overlap of its safety zone with the safety zone of the primary runway.

“It meets all the new (Federal Aviation Administration) safety standards,” said Gary Peters, airport authority board chairman.

It was narrowed from 100 feet wide to 75 feet because that’s the most the FAA, which paid for 94 percent of the project, will allow for a secondary runway.

The work started in late March, when many businesses and schools were closing around the country to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Still, the project was only delayed two weeks, for wet weather, not because of the pandemic. Knife River managed to get all the supplies and equipment it needed, Peters said.

While the runway was out of service, the aircraft that normally use the secondary runway were diverted to the airport’s longer and wider primary runway.

The planes that frequent the secondary runway represent a majority of the traffic at the airport. Among them are cargo carriers for UPS and FedEx, private charters and crop dusters.

SkyWest, the only commercial passenger airline serving Lewiston, lands on the primary runway.

Even though commercial passenger planes don’t use the secondary runway, rebuilding it helps Lewiston make the case to add flights on the only existing route between Lewiston and Salt Lake City or two new destinations, Peters said.

The availability of the secondary runway means commercial passenger flights won’t be interrupted if there is an accident with general aviation aircraft.

Plus the FAA is more likely to pay for an air traffic control tower if the airport has two runways, and that creates a safer environment for commercial passenger planes, Peters said.

“This is a big win,” he said.

Williams may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 848-2261.

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