I work/worked at Detroit City Airport

[313WX]

Detroit city schools can have academies that train students for jobs as pilots, airplane maintenance/mechanics, air traffic control, and security.

We already have Davis Aerospace [[very nice school) behind City Airport for what it's worth.

But I agree, City Airport and the land around it has so much potential. It could be Detroit's equivalent to Chicago's Midway.

[MikeM]

I worked there for an air freight company, Executive Aviation, in the summer of '85. They had hangar and office space in the old terminal building but their operations were run out of a trailer parked in an area called the freight circle, on the south side of the airport, west of French Road.

I would enter the grounds through the gate at the end of French Road and drive past the DPD hangar and a set of T-hangars to get to the freight circle. A couple of dispatchers in the trailer took orders for pickup or delivery by phone and assigned pilots to the job. They would also dispatch truck drivers to pickup local freight. Most of the business was from auto companies or suppliers. I worked as a driver and aircraft loader.

On a typical day a call would come from someone like Chrysler: they needed some door springs at their St Louis plant ASAP. I would drive to somewhere like Sterling Heights or Livonia, to some small shop, pick up a pallet or two of springs, and bring them to the freight circle. A few pilots slept in bunks in one of the nearby T-hangars. When I arrived, the dispatcher would fetch them, the pilots would stumble into the trailer, unshaved, wearing t-shirts and sandals, plot out their flight to Spirt of St Louis airport and file a flight plan. While they were getting ready, other drivers and I would load an aircraft, usually a Lear 23 or 24, and within 10 minutes they were blasting off like the space shuttle.

The business seemed to be feast or famine. Some days it was rush, rush, rush like this all day long. The next week you might go days without anything. I think the company was always in trouble and cooking the books - both financial and aircraft maintenance records. The company had a mixed fleet of Lear Jets, Aero Commanders, Beech 18s, and various twin Cessnas or Pipers. Common destinations were the auto assembly locations: St Louis, Janesville, Oshawa, Kansas City, Kenosha; sometimes St Paul, Atlanta, or El Paso. It seemed like more freight went out than came in, but I delivered plenty parts to Cadillac Clark Street, Chrysler Jefferson and Warren, Ford Wayne, Lake Orion, etc. Sometimes the pilots would fly out empty, pick up something elsewhere and deliver it to a third location. Most of the freight was indescribable: bins weighing hundreds of pounds full of some small auto part or a solid steel plate cut in some odd shape that also weighed hundreds of pounds.

I went along on a few flights and got to fly an empty leg here or there, but going into the auto plants was much more interesting to me. I don't remember much else about the airport activities outside of that south end. Our competitor on the field was Bard Air, owned by a Grosse Pointe resident who was also a pilot. He was killed when he crashed the Lear he was flying into Mt Elliot Cemetery. I don't think either company is still around and I doubt the business is a active with the closing of so many area plants since then.

[eastland]

Worked at Aero Quality Sales in 1976; forget which hanger it was in. Used to take trash to a city dump on French Road. Sonny Eliot kept his plane in the hanger; had a caricature of him with an umbrella and raindrops on the tail.

[Charlie Malesev AT2 W8EIV]

Yea ole Sonny Eliot, over the 18 years I worked for Beacon Avionics Sonny had at least three ground incursions he kept hitting the fence with the wing tips.

Charlie / AT2 / W8EIV

[Aerojoe]

We already have Davis Aerospace [[very nice school) behind City Airport for what it's worth.

But I agree, City Airport and the land around it has so much potential. It could be Detroit's equivalent to Chicago's Midway.

Davis Aerospace is no longer on the airport DPS merged it with Golightly on Jefferson. They are also no longer an FAA certified school.

[313WX]

Davis Aerospace is no longer on the airport DPS merged it with Golightly on Jefferson. They are also no longer an FAA certified school.

Oh yes, I know that's no longer the case.

Keep in mind that post was over 3 years old, lol...