Commercial Service Airport of the Year

Fargo’s Hector International Airport has received the “2020 Commercial Service Airport of the Year” award. The award is for excellence in maintaining safety, project management, and community outreach and is sponsored by the North Dakota Aeronautics Commission in partnership with the Airport Association of North Dakota.

Hector International Airport worked hard to ramp up cleaning efforts to protect passengers and employees, and invested in a robot vacuum unit to allow airport staff to focus on sanitizing vital areas throughout the facility.

Hector International Airport boasts a busy and rapidly growing air cargo facility. In 2020 a record was set, with more than 420 million pounds of cargo flown through the airport and a growth of 7.5% over the previous year. 

Hector International Airport joined with The Arts Partnership to showcase the work of local artists with its ArtWORKS exhibit. As part of the program, a variety of local musicians regaled airport visitors with 18 live musical performances during the 2020 holiday season. 

The Hector International Airport is congratulated for a tremendous year of accomplishments.

General Aviation Airport of the Year

The JB Lindquist Regional Airport has received the North Dakota “2020 General Aviation Airport of the Year” award. 

The airport showed a strong belief in aviation advocacy and community outreach by hosting a career day, where high school shop class students were educated on career opportunities in aviation and learned how aircraft systems are different compared to vehicles. The airport also worked with Dakota Butte Museum and presented on the history of Hettinger Municipal Airport, starting around the 1930s. 

The JB Lindquist Regional Airport showed community support by being one of the only airports to host a fly-in breakfast in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event raised about $1,500 to help support the local fire department. 

The airport showed great progress in 2020 by constructing several projects. They poured concrete pads by the General Aviation (GA) terminal and self-serve fuel tanks, installed digital keypad locks on the majority of the hangars for added security, replaced airport windsocks, extended the crosswind overrun by 300 feet, and finished rehabilitation of both partial parallel taxiways, as well as constructed a full parallel taxiway.

To top off all the airport’s accomplishments in 2020, the airport decided to rename the airport from Hettinger Municipal Airport to JB Lindquist Regional Airport, in honor of the long-time aviator and airport manager, JB Lindquist.  

The JB Lindquist Regional Airport is congratulated for a tremendous year of accomplishments.

Passport Awards

Eight pilots were presented with gold awards for participating in the “Fly North Dakota Airports” Passport Program. The passport program presents awards to pilots for flying to airports in the state, as well as attending FAA Safety Seminars and visiting the two North Dakota Air Museums. 

The most prestigious gold award level was achieved by eight pilots during 2020. These pilots received a leather flight jacket embroidered with the North Dakota Flying Legacy logo, in addition to the bronze and silver awards. This prestigious accomplishment is achieved when visiting all 89 public use airports in North Dakota, visiting both air museums, and attending at least three FAA Safety seminars. These pilots join the 71 others who have completed the passport program in previous years, making a total of 78 total pilots who have achieved the gold award level to date.

The following is a list of the individuals:

Deen R. Brecht

Michael Moe

Jean Moe

David Operchal

Pat Fagan

Scott Williamson

Dale M Ripplinger

Jayme Opp