It must have been music to the ears of economic development and airport folks in the Greensboro-High Point area of North Carolina. Over the summer, Honda Aircraft Company announced groundbreaking on an expansion of its facility at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro. The expansion will allow a major increase in production at a factory where wings for the company’s corporate jets are assembled and add storage for service parts for the company’s fleet of HondaJets around the globe.
Expected to be completed next summer, and representing a $15.5 million investment, Honda Aircraft’s expansion is helping to make the region one of the fastest growing aviation hubs in the country. HondaJet has been headquartered in Greensboro for over ten years.
“Most traditional airports function as a place for transportation of people and cargo, and that is important for us, too,” said Kevin Baker, executive director of the PTI Airport Authority. “The other aspect of it for us is as a place of employment.”
That employment is increasingly concentrated in the aerospace sector, as well as logistics. The airport contributes $6 billion to the local economy and is responsible for the generation of 25,500 jobs.
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