Repairs continue on a two-seat homebuilt airplane that hit a sinkhole on the Packwood Airport runway in October of last year.
The airport has remained closed since the wreck, and Larry Mason, airport systems manager for the Packwood Airport and the Ed Carlson Memorial Field-South Lewis County Airport in Toledo, said he believes it should remain closed until planned upgrades are made.
The pilot in the October wreck wasn’t injured, but Mason said the closure is a safety precaution, so no more planes can come in and risk hitting a sinkhole that could injure or kill pilots or passengers.
The propeller of the plane in the October crash struck the runway, which Mason said requires the whole engine to be torn down.
Some of the parts from the homemade plane are no longer made, but a mechanic at the Chehalis-Centralia Airport is working on the aircraft.
The insurance for the Lewis County-owned Packwood Airport is paying for the repairs.
The sinkholes in the runway are caused by rotting stumps that were paved over when the airport was first built in 1948 as an emergency strip on the west side of the Cascade Mountain Range.
Mason said the largest sinkhole the airport has had was 3 feet in diameter and 18 inches deep. If a plane had hit that, the aircraft would have been destroyed, Mason said.
Lewis County took over the airport, which was previously owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation, in the 1980s.
This spring or summer, construction on the multi-million dollar airport runway rebuild is expected to begin, Mason said. The project will bring the airport up to Federal Aviation Administration standards by widening it to 60 feet and providing 250-foot safety zones at each end of the 2,360-foot long runway.
The runway will be completely torn up and the old asphalt will be recycled. Two inches or more of new asphalt will be laid down, which should be in good condition for 25 to 30 years, Mason said.
“I’m just looking forward to opening … hopefully in the summer of this year. It’s going to be quite a draw for people,” Mason said.
The FAA is funding 90 percent of the project, and the WSDOT and Lewis County are each contributing 5 percent.
