By Jemi Chew
FALMOUTH — Around 4 p.m. on May 8, a plane landed in Falmouth at Gene Snyder Airport, which is located just off KY-22, left of Highway 27 N.
The pilot, Jeremy Nissley, was transporting a sick patient in her late 30s and her husband back home to Missouri after a hospital appointment in Connecticut, via his Grumman Tiger.
The small, private aircraft carries only four passengers, including the pilot.
Nissley is a volunteer pilot for Angel Flight East, an organization whose mission according to their website is “to provide free air transportation to qualified patients and their families by arranging flights to distant medical facilities, delivering supplies to disaster areas, and reuniting families during desperate times.”
“In situations like this where this passenger is very ill, she doesn’t have to deal with walking through airports. She doesn’t have to go through security, drag luggage around. We’re right here and it’s just it’s simpler that way,” Nissley said.
“That’s more personal too, and I feel like it helps with their quality of life, you know, just helping them to be able to hopefully get home sooner rather than driving.”
Falmouth is a common pitstop for Angel Flight East and other small private planes as the Gene Snyder Airport provides cheap gas, has a weather station and restrooms for the pilots to use.
Additionally, it is an uncontrolled airport, which means that pilots do not need jump through as many hoops to land compared to bigger airports such as the Cincinnati airport. This makes arranging flights much easier — thus attracting all sorts of flyers.
Besides charity organizations, businessmen also frequent the airport for meetings that are in or near Falmouth according to Dan Bell, chairman of Falmouth-Pendleton County Airport Board.
Bell said another surprising reason flyers often come to the Gene Snyder Airport is because it is close to the Ark Encounter, a Christian museum approximately a 30-minute drive from Falmouth. The Airport also occasionally lends these visitors a car for their trip.
Despite its small size, the airport has a main building accessible by code for pilots who need to use the restroom, four private hangers, a flight school (for both serious and recreational learners) and a flight simulator in the classroom that learners can use to practice flying. The simulator is technologically advanced enough that flying on the simulator can be logged as airtime.
The airport is entirely kept up by volunteers, which includes all members of the Falmouth-Pendleton County Airport Board and one paid-staff.
“All the guys on the board, everybody volunteers and puts in time just because we believe in the airport and we believe it’s good for the area,” Bell said.