Cullman Regional Airport Celebrates Milestone Anniversary, Cuts Ribbon on New Taxiway

VINEMONT — It may have been a year overdue, but Thursday’s celebration of the Cullman Regional Airport’s 60th anniversary looked and felt like a time-traveling, generation-spanning survey not only of the facility’s past, but also of its present and its future.

From a small landing strip in the late 1950s that primarily served local pilots, to a true regional stop that’s put the Cullman area increasingly on a much bigger business radar, Thursday’s anniversary gathering and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the airport’s finished north taxiway offered manager Ben Harrison a chance to reflect on decades of progress — as well as to dig in for what he described as an exciting future.

Citing the Wright Brothers’ first takeoff in 1903, Harrison said aviation — and Cullman’s airport along with it — has seen phenomenal change in a relatively short time. “Look at what aviation as a whole has become,” he told the crowd of local officials and friends of the airport. “We’ve gone thru multiple world wars; we’ve gone through the Jet Age; we’ve gone through the Rocket Age. … In 116 years, that’s how far we’ve been.

“It’s going to be interesting to see where we go in the next 116 years,” he added, saying that the burgeoning field of piloted drone aviation presents an all-but-inevitable opportunity for Cullman’s airport to capitalize on serving an expanding aviation frontier.

“We’re going to see, in our lifetime, people who fly in, basically, a drone powered by a battery…And it’s going to totally change the fundamentals of air travel,” Harrison said. “We’re working on that now with our engineers — on how to set this airport up to get ready for the future.”

Jointly supported by Cullman County and the City of Cullman and overseen by a five-member board (including the city’s mayor and the county commission chairman), the airport passed its 60th year in operation in 2018. Ongoing work to finish the taxiway project — just one piece of a much larger, multi-phase plan to continue expanding and improving the airport’s facilities and services — delayed the date of the anniversary commemoration so that, as Harrison noted, the ribbon-cutting could be folded into the proceedings.

Harrison also touched on the airport’s origins, as well as the community-minded foresight that local leaders and business people at the time demonstrated in securing a permanent aviation stop in Cullman County.

“In the mid-‘50s in this community, there was a group of people who sat down and saw the need for an airport — and I do believe [meeting] that need came out of the ‘Flying 50,’” he said, referencing the dozens of local leaders who led the charge on building up the Cullman area’s infrastructure with long-term growth in mind.

“I’m glad to say we still have one member of the Flying 50 here, and that’s Mr. Roy Drinkard,” added Harrison, nodding to the 99 year-old businessman, who sat alongside other airport supporters in the front row at Thursday’s event. “I think it’s remarkable that he’s still active in our community — and that he’s still flying in our community.”

Cullman mayor Woody Jacobs said he envisions the airport continuing to meet the kind of needs that fill the niche beneath large-scale commercial air travel, and that the city is committed to helping achieve that aim. “We’re not going to be a big airport, and we don’t want to be a big airport,” he said. “[But] we do want to be an economic engine. We want to get companies here, and we appreciate everyone who’s worked with us toward that goal.”

County Commission chairman Kenneth Walker shared an anecdote in which he recalled a conversation with an executive from a large international company that had elected to do business in Cullman County. “He said, “You better be glad you’ve got an airport — or I wouldn’t be here,” Walker recalled. “This airport brings jobs to this community — and we want it to continue to do that.”

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