HARLINGEN — As air travel picks up after more than a year of uncertainty, flight cancellations and low passenger loads, things are looking better for businesses associated with Valley International Airport, too.
Sun Valley Aviation is a fixed-base operator, providing fuel for airlines, general aviation and the military, performing aircraft maintenance, selling and installing avionics, flight training and providing concierge services for customers using the facility on the east side of the airport.
To juggle these revenue streams and keep them going, you need coffee. Lots of coffee.
“We get our coffee out of Guatemala every month,” said Pat Kornegay, Sun Valley’s president and one of several co-owners of the business.
“We’re out right now,” said his daughter Katie Kornegay, one of the managers at Sun Valley.
“I talked to Jimmy, and it’s on the way,” Pat Kornegay said. “This friend of mine is a retired farmer and crop duster, and he lives in Guatemala and has a little coffee farm. And he sends us about 40 pounds a month. Really good coffee.”
Busy days
Sun Valley Aviation opened its facility at VIA in 2014, and now has 25 full-time employees. Several are graduates of nearby Texas State Technical College’s aircraft maintenance program.
“We have fuel. We provide fuel for the airlines. We sell fuel retail and wholesale to corporate and private operators. Aircraft maintenance,” Pat Kornegay said. “We do all sorts. And that’s a big thing with us, aircraft maintenance. We have a large crew of mechanics and avionics technicians. Avionics are the radio and navigation systems for the airplanes.”
And this day last week, it was bustling.
Two military pilots were eating a late lunch in the break room, a pair of NASA astronauts in blue flight uniforms were walking across the airplane parking area near a NASA jet, and airplane maintenance crews were giving several planes an annual, federally-mandated inspection.
“We are very happy to have Sun Valley Aviation here at Valley International Airport,” said Marv Esterly, director of aviation at VIA, via email. “They provide first-rate FBO operations for our aviation customers, including refueling for several of our airlines, military and cargo operators.”
History of flights
While airplanes and their upkeep and feeding are central to the operation here, Sun Valley also has the air of an aviation museum.
Its walls are lined with historic photos of crop dusters, pilots flying fighters and bombers during World War II and helicopters in Vietnam.
“We’ve got a lot of cool art around here,” Pat Kornegay said. “That’s a Battle of Britain thing, and we’ve got some RAF (British Royal Air Force) relations in our family.”
In one unusual photo, a bright yellow Air Tractor crop-duster is touching down to land on the deck of the carrier USS Lexington in Corpus Christi.
“It makes me mad when I see that. I took that picture,” Pat Kornegay said.
Kornegay was at a crop-duster convention in Corpus and the plan was to have the organization’s banquet onboard the carrier.
All it took was to ask the carrier’s museum director if it would be OK to land a crop-duster on the carrier’s flight deck.
“He said, ‘Really, you can do that?” Kornegay recalls.
“Oh yeah. They land real short anyway,” Kornegay replied. “And he says sure, have at it.”
Kornegay called a friend who happened to be an Air Tractor distributor and asked if he could borrow one of his planes. The friend said he’d have to check first with his insurance agent.
“He called me back in an hour and said I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Kornegay said. “’I said what’s the good news. He said we can do it. What’s the bad news? I’m going to do it instead of you.”’
As it turns out, his friend’s father landed his U.S. Navy Corsair on that same flight deck during the Battle of Leyte Gulf to re-fuel and re-arm because his own carrier was under attack by Japanese fighter planes.
“I said ok,” Kornegay said. “And his dad was standing next to me when I took that picture.”
Hangar No. 3
Sun Valley has two hangars and hopes to make it three, huge open-air warehouses where maintenance is performed or just storage of planes out of the elements.
“The new, new hangar,” Pat Kornegay called it, having earlier pointed out the steel beams stacked at the north end of the facility, ready to be erected.
“The one they haven’t given us permission to build,” Katie Kornegay said.
Sun Valley’s plans for a third hangar are on hold after airport officials blocked the construction of the hangar.
Sun Valley has sued VIA over that, and the litigation is still pending.
Esterly declined comment on the lawsuit.
