Quinter on its way to getting an airport

Quinter is getting an airport after a nearly four-year-long effort by local health officials to improve emergency air transport services.

The 130-year-old town, which is 235 miles northwest of Wichita, learned last month that it will receive $1.96 million from the Kansas Department of Transportation’s Kansas Airport Improvement Program to build a concrete runway, taxiway, apron and access road.

“It’s been a long-time goal for Kansas to ensure that our rural residents have access to services,” Transportation Secretary Mike King said in a statement. “This location in Quinter will fill a gap and provide that service.”

The push for the airport was led by the Gove County Healthcare Endowment Foundation, a nonprofit group whose mission is to improve health care services in Gove County. Quinter is the home of Gove County Medical Center, whose physicians had identified air ambulance service as a need as many as 10 years ago, said Carol Kinderknecht, the foundation’s executive director.

“We had inquired with the doctors on a number of different occasions what would (they) like to see,” she said. “Immediately, the comment was air ambulance (service) in Quinter.”

Quinter has an airstrip, but officials there can’t get air ambulance services to land on the “dirt runway,” Kinderknecht said.

When the medical center has to transport by air a critically ill or injured patient to a larger hospital for advanced medical care, the patient must be transported by ground ambulance to Oakley, 35 miles to the west, or WaKeeney, 22 miles to the east, to be picked up by an air ambulance.

“When you talk about somebody’s life … that’s a lot of time,” Kinderknecht said.

She said Quinter’s proximity to Interstate 70 also means the town’s hospital routinely treats a number of motor vehicle accident victims.

Kinderknecht said that in October 2011, the foundation signed an agreement to conduct a feasibility study for an airport with a concrete runway, as well as development plans.

Over the next several years, the foundation acquired the land for the airport – 142 acres in all – and moved from development plans to the design phase, which also included burying underground electrical lines to the site, installing a water well and developing a zoning plan.

Along the way, the foundation received $652,000 in grants from the Kansas Department of Transportation for airport planning and land acquisition, according to department reports. Kinderknecht said that as part of the grants, the foundation has had to provide additional funding of about $270,000.

Those costs don’t include the funding it will have to provide as part of the runway construction. She said she won’t know the foundation’s costs until bids are let and returned for the dirt work and concrete installation.

“We will have some (more) fundraising we will have to do,” she said.

Kinderknecht said she hopes dirt work will begin this fall, followed by installation of a 4,000- to 5,000-foot concrete runway in the spring.

She said that when the project is completed, the airport will be owned by the foundation, but it will be a public-use airport, “so other aircraft can fly into it.”

Kinderknecht said a formal ceremony marking the latest grant will be held Sept. 17 at Gove County Medical Center.

“It’s kind of exciting,” she said. “Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d be this far with it.”

Dennis O’Connor, manager of federal and state affairs for the Kansas Aviation Division of KDOT, said there are 137 public-use airports in Kansas.

“We’re about 90 percent coverage, and we’re moving forward,” he said. “Quinter helps fill one of those voids.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2015 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Quinter on its way to getting an airport."