Tennessee’s John C Tune Airport reopened on Friday, March 20, after sustaining substantial damage from a March 3 tornado.
The clean-up operation is still underway, but the airport has been restored sufficiently to support safe flight operations on a 24-hour basis, the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA) confirmed in a statement.
“Our team in the Emergency Operations Center and all our business partners worked diligently to bring back John C Tune Airport in short order,” said Doug Kreulen, president and CEO of MNAA, which owns and operates the airport. “I’m enormously proud of the effort involved as we were determined to get Tune functioning once again for the region’s general aviation community.”
The infrastructure damage alone is estimated at US$93m, which doesn’t include any estimates of personal property damage such as aircraft and vehicles. More than 90 aircraft were destroyed, along with 17 hangars that were either destroyed or damaged.
John C Tune, located in the Cockrill Bend area of west Nashville, is a reliever airport for Nashville International Airport, which was not damaged by the tornado.