Plans to expand the Elizabethtown airport to allow jet airline service got a thumbs-up Monday (12/18) from the Leitchfield City Council.

“We are pleased to support a competitively-priced regional jet airline service in Elizabethtown,” Mayor William H. Thomason wrote to Luke B. Schmidt, a consultant for the Elizabethtown Airport Board.

Thomason said the addition of jet service would benefit travelers and “provide substantial benefits to thousands of companies and organizations located throughout Central Kentucky.”

In his letter, which the council quickly approved sending, Thomason said “accessing the airport in Elizabethtown will be much easier than those in either Louisville or Nashville, which are often plagued with traffic congestion and long lines at check-in and security screenings, which adds more time to any trip.”

He called jet airline service in E'town as something that would provide “a new and powerful economic development tool for area chambers of commerce and industrial development groups.”

It would provide a boon, too, to our tourism industry, “giving tourists a convenient and economic option for travel,” he said. And remote sections of central Kentucky as well as larger cities would now become more connected to the global economy, he added.

Thomason described the air travel problem now for local travelers, public and private, as a turn-off.

“Air travelers first have to drive to Louisville or Nashville to start their trip, and depending on where one lives in the region, it can take over three hours to reach the nearest commercial airport.

“This results in additional and unnecessary time and expense,” he wrote. “In fact, in order to make an early morning departure, some area travelers must leave the night before and spend the night in a hotel, which adds even more expense to the trip.”

The city has been urging Grayson County residents and organizations to write to the board's consultant in support of expansion at the Elizabethtown airport.

The mayor sent his letter to Schmidt at the Elizabethtown Airport Board, P.O. Box 1866, Elizabethtown, 42702. Or, the letters can be dropped off at the Leitchfield Chamber of Commerce for delivery.