NKY Tribune / February 8, 2021The Metropolitan Club will honor Candace McGraw, CEO of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Int’l Airport (CVG), as the recipient of the 2021 Metropolitan Award.The 2021 Metropolitan Award Dinner is scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, October 12 at The Metropolitan Club, pending Kentucky’s Healthy At Work restrictions, guidelines and protocols at that time.Corporate, private entities and individual attendees are invited to attend, and sponsorship opportunities are available; for more information contact Dr. Dorothy Air, Chair, Metropolitan Award Committee, at [dorothyair@gmail.com](mailto:dorothyair@gmail.com). Additional information is available by calling the club at 859-491-2400 or email [reception@metropolitanclub.net](mailto:reception@metropolitanclub.net).Candace McGraw has served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) since July 2011. Candace is proud to lead a team that has been recognized by SkyTrax as the “World’s Best Airport Serving Less Than 10 million Passengers” and as the “Best Regional Airport in North America” for seven of the last nine years.The Metropolitan Award is presented to a citizen in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky who has exhibited exponential effort toward improving the lives of our citizens, and who has made significant contributions toward the unification of our community.These efforts take place within both the business and social worlds and are indicative of the devotion that the recipient holds towards others.The Metropolitan Club proudly supports local organizations and has contributed more than $1.6 million to several charitable organizations since the Club’s founding in 1991. The Club shares equally seventy percent of its bottom-line results with three not for profit associations: Life Learning Center, UpSpring and Be Concerned.[FULL STORY HERE](https://www.nkytribune.com/2021/02/candace-mcgraw-ceo-of-cvg-to-be-honored-as-2021-metropolitan-award-winner-in-october/)

WVXU News / Ann Thompson / February 1, 2021It may not be too much longer before airports around the world use self-driving vehicles to take you to your terminal, transport your luggage and clear the runway. Tests are underway now for the luggage part at the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport with an autonomous tractor.[ThorDrive's](https://www.thordrive.ai/) Chris Lee points to cameras and sensors on the front of a base tractor pulling a couple of luggage carriers. This autonomous vehicle is designed to be able to avoid planes, workers and anything else that might be in its way on the tarmac. It knows when to stop.With a remote control in hand Lee says, "This is going to be the eyes for the human driver in the system and we have a computer behind in the cabin."ThorDrive has been testing this diesel vehicle for about a year and will put an electric one through the motions soon.Native Cincinnatian Eddie Shelton recently joined ThorDrive as vice president of business development. Just a month ago, the company released the proof of concept."We intend to have salable units by the end of the year. For the near future we intend to obviously extend that into a leadership position and autonomous vehicles in aviation and then also proliferate our technologies to other ground support equipment," he says.The story of how [ThorDrive ended up moving to Cincinnati](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuiv2Fb-n0U&feature=youtu.be) (after a stop in Silicon Valley) from Seoul, Korea, is an interesting one.[FULL STORY (with Video and Audio Clips) HERE](https://www.wvxu.org/post/autonomous-vehicles-making-their-debut-cvg#stream/0)

Erlanger, Ky. (February 1, 2021) – The [Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport](https://cvgairport.com/) (CVG) and Miami University (Miami) announced that they have finalized an agreement regarding a new structure for the management and operations of the [Miami University Airport](http://www.miamioh.edu/parking/transportation/airport/index.html) (OXD).The agreement stipulates that Miami will continue to own the OXD Airport, as well as the 300 acres on which it is located. CVG will manage and operate the facility, which will remain a general aviation airport that supports corporate flights, flight training and recreational flights. The term of the lease and operation agreement is for five years, renewable for five additional five-year terms.  “By partnering with CVG, Miami is tapping into unparalleled expertise and knowledge to improve airport services and benefit the entire region,” said Miami President Gregory Crawford. “This long-term commitment to OXD airport will create more avenues for collaboration between CVG professionals and Miami’s faculty, and more opportunities for our students in terms of potential projects and internships. All of this will support aviation and airport-related innovation in Southwest Ohio.”The agreement has been contemplated for several years, stemming from collaborations between CVG and Miami around university engagement in the airport business and aviation-related innovation.“Over the last several years, the CVG team has been focused on growing and diversifying the airport business,” said Candace McGraw, CEO of CVG. “I could not be more pleased with this partnership with Miami University and the opportunity to manage the OXD Airport. CVG will bring our airport business know-how to handle the day-to-day affairs of OXD. Our staff will learn a great deal about general aviation airport management that will complement our core business of owning and operating CVG Airport.”The agreement between CVG and Miami is pending concurrence by the Federal Aviation Administration.About Miami UniversityNationally recognized as one of the most outstanding undergraduate institutions, Miami University is a public university located in Oxford, Ohio. With a student body of nearly 19,000, Miami effectively combines a wide range of strong academic programs with faculty who love to teach and the personal attention ordinarily found only at much smaller institutions About CVG AirportThe Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) has been serving passengers since 1947. CVG welcomed more than 9.1 million passengers in 2019, a 2.7 percent increase over the year prior. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, CVG still offers the most nonstop destinations, airline choices, and the lowest average airfares in the region. As the 7th largest cargo airport in North America and home to the Amazon Air Hub and DHL Express Global Superhub, CVG is diversified in both passenger and cargo operations. With an annual impact of $6.8 billion on the local economy, the airport drives regional growth and remains a leader in innovation. Learn more about CVG and its response to COVID-19 at CVGairport.com/FlyHealthy.About Miami University Airport (KOXD)Miami University Airport (OXD) is a general aviation airport located two miles west of Oxford, Ohio. Major facilities at the airport include a 4,011-foot primary runway (Runway 05/23) and a partial parallel taxiway. The airport, which is owned by Miami University and will be operated by CVG Airport, provides FBO services such as aircraft fueling, aircraft parking, hangar storage, and courtesy cars through the university. The airport also supports law/drug enforcement flights, military practice approaches and refueling, and powerline inspections by Duke Energy.

Cincinnati Business Courier / Chris Wetterich / January 28, 2021Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport's board has signed off on a deal to lease Miami University’s underused airport, with the hope of expanding its use through innovation, attracting additional business traffic and general aviation and using it for training. The Miami University Airport (airport code: OXD) is about two miles west of downtown Oxford, adjacent to a community park. Commercial service is not planned for the single-runway facility, which has three buildings nearby, including hangars. Many Ohio universities built airports in the 1940s when flight was becoming more common.“The airport has great bones. It has great potential,” said CVG CEO Candace McGraw. “I think we can really bolster the general aviation business.”About 30 years ago, Miami had a flight training program at the airport that is now defunct. The airport is little used today other than for a few entities that keep airplanes there and for other aircraft that stop there to refuel. Four airplanes lease space there. There are about 20 flights per month at the airport, with 32 stops for refueling by other aircraft whose final destination is not MU.CVG’s vision also includes the airport being used as a testing site for autonomous vehicles, drones and other new technology that would be useful to the airport, McGraw said.“It’s a chance to think bigger and bolder. They’re such a great and respected organization,” McGraw said of the university. “Our overall mission is to support to the aviation community via commercial, cargo and the general aviation spaces. We have very limited general aviation aircraft (at CVG). We thought, how can CVG and Miami and maybe perhaps other airports be partners in an aviation system?”Miami University President Greg Crawford said students across a variety of programs and majors stand to benefit from the partnership.Given Amazon and DHL’s large presence at CVG, Miami sees opportunities to work with them, particularly with programs like the Farmer School of Business, which has logistics experts. Data and robotics initiatives through Miami’s Boldly Creative Program also have potential to piggyback off of CVG’s efforts.“There’s a lot that we can do here. When you’re in these circles in Cincinnati … CVG always comes up. It’s a very innovative airport. They’re very forward looking,” Crawford said. “We have this incredible opportunity for entrepreneurship. We’d love to have those students engaged in those projects.”The lease will be for five years, with potential renewals extending it to 25. CVG will pay an annual $84,000 lease payment, but over the first three years, Miami will subsidize operations, with CVG receiving a net $36,000. After that, the hope is that CVG will have created enough revenue opportunities to forgo the university subsidy.[FULL STORY HERE](https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/28/cvg-to-lease-miami-university-s-airport.html)

WXIX-FOX 19 News / January 27, 2021[](https://www.fox19.com/video/2021/01/27/planning-travel/)[VIDEO - Only Story Here](https://www.fox19.com/video/2021/01/27/planning-travel/)

The Lane Report / Greg Paeth / January 8, 2021It’s a pretty good bet that 2021 will prove to be an extraordinary year for the tightly intertwined logistics and transportation industries in Northern Kentucky. That’s saying quite a bit in the wake of 2020, which will be cemented in our memories as the year that COVID-19 wreaked havoc on just about every aspect of our lives. Consider three vitally important stories that are expected to unfold this year: • Amazon, the million-ton gorilla of online retailing, is expected to open the first phase of its $1.5 billion air hub and distribution center in Northern Kentucky sometime before the 2021 holiday season. The company said it will create some 2,000 jobs once the entire facility is up and running on property owned by the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), where Amazon is expected to handle 64 flights every day. • Repairs have been made to the Brent Spence Bridge, which was damaged in November by a fiery tractor-trailer collision. The bridge carries 160,000 cars per day – and it was designed to carry just 80,000. It is also one of the busiest trucking routes in the United States, with freight equaling 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product crossing the bridge each year. Northern Kentucky officials have long been advocating for funding to upgrade the bridge, which originally opened in 1963. Officials hope the crash and shutdown, which lasted nearly six weeks, will shine the light once again on the need to upgrade the critically important north-south truck route – one of the reasons why Kentucky has established itself as a logistics mecca for the country.• For the first time in 20 years, the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky – the TANK bus system – will introduce what it calls a substantial “redesign” of its services as it eliminates six routes and begins to concentrate its efforts in high-population areas along existing routes. The move is designed to counter a decline in ridership in the region and elsewhere in the country that has been caused, in part, by low gas prices. As the potential impact of these topics indicates, 2021 may present an unsettling blend of good news and bad for everyone who’s immersed in logistics and transportation in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky metropolitan region, where it’s estimated that more than 106,000 people work in those broadly defined categories. Of those, some 30,000 workers make their homes in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties, according to Northern Kentucky Tri-County Economic Development Corp. (Tri-ED), which focuses on economic development in three counties that have a combined population of about 385,000. In her job as the CEO of CVG, Candace McGraw had a free front-row seat for the complete spectrum of pandemic-related news. At one level, the airport and most of its employees managed to avoid skyrocketing infection rates that crippled some businesses, said McGraw, who oversees an institution that is said to have an annual economic impact of $6.8 billion and 14,500 “badged employees” who work for the airport or other companies located on airport property.Despite becoming only the third airport in the country to receive a COVID-related “Airport Health Accreditation” from an international trade association in mid-September, passengers stayed away and numbers declined dramatically throughout 2020.“With the pandemic, our passenger levels are down, of course, but compared with all airports throughout the country, we’re tracking – thankfully – slightly above the national level for airports our size. So we will likely finish this year with about 35% of the passengers we had in 2019, and that’s faring better than some of my airport colleagues,” McGraw said. For 2019, the airport reported 9.1 million passengers.As the COVID-19 crisis worsened late in the year, McGraw made it clear that CVG and the airline industry don’t expect an immediate bounce back. For 2021, passenger levels are projected at 50% of the 2019 total, McGraw said.“For 2021, our budget is projecting that we’ll be at about 50% of the 2019 passenger levels,” said McGraw, who noted that airfares now rank 92nd in the country with an average of $215, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.She also said that because of COVID-19, “cargo is booming.”“Throughout the pandemic, cargo is operating at (Christmas) holiday volumes and continues to do so,” said McGraw. In mid-November, she said, shipments were up 13.5% over last year, which had been a record year for the seventh-largest cargo airport in the country. “Cargo continues to be the bright spot. E-commerce has been accelerated by this pandemic.”

Erlanger, Ky. (January 29, 2021)  The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) is now a direct international destination for private aircraft thanks to the opening of a [new general aviation facility (GAF)](https://www.cvgairport.com/flight/general-aviation) at CVG’s fixed-base operation – Wheels Up Jet Center (formerly Delta Jet Center). The GAF will provide on-demand, onsite U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) clearance for private aircraft, allowing private aircraft to clear customs at CVG ensuring that travel and trade can move more expeditiously through the airport. Previously, CBP provided customs clearance for private aircraft on a limited, case-by-case basis.   The $1.2 million construction project, led by the airport, is now open and operational. CVG Airport engaged Wheels Up, the current private jet operator, to use an existing portion of its facility for the GAF. CBP will staff and operate in the facility in partnership with Wheels Up.  “This was an important project for CVG as it expands the U.S. customs clearance capabilities at our airport, benefiting private jet travelers and making CVG even more efficient and accessible,” said Candace McGraw, chief executive officer, CVG Airport.“This new facility provides updated technology and a secure location for our officers to simultaneously complete our anti-terrorism mission and give the public better access to these necessary services,” said Cincinnati Port Director Richard Gillespie. “With this modernized general aviation facility, we will enhance public safety while continuing to support legitimate trade and travel.”“We are proud to be serving international private flights securely and efficiently at the Wheels Up Jet Center,” said Lt Gen (R) Tom Bergeson, chief operating officer of Wheels Up. “The redesigned facility is a world class operation, and we look forward to welcoming businesses and travelers from around the world through our doors.”About CVG AirportThe Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) has been serving passengers since 1947. CVG welcomed more than 9.1 million passengers in 2019, a 2.7 percent increase over the year prior. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, CVG still offers the most nonstop destinations, airline choices, and the lowest average airfares in the region. As the 7th largest cargo airport in North America and home to the Amazon Air Hub and DHL Express Global Superhub, CVG is diversified in both passenger and cargo operations. With an annual impact of $6.8 billion on the local economy, the airport drives regional growth and remains a leader in innovation. Learn more about CVG and its response to COVID-19 at CVGairport.com/FlyHealthy.About Wheels UpWheels Up, the leading brand in private aviation and the only company in the industry to offer a total private aviation solution, was founded and is led by renowned entrepreneur Kenny Dichter. Wheels Up delivers world-class safety, service, and flexibility through on-demand flights, membership programs, corporate solutions, aircraft management, whole aircraft sales, and commercial travel benefits through a strategic partnership with Delta Air Lines. Wheels Up Customers and Members have access to over 1,500 safety-vetted and verified aircraft. Through the Wheels Up App anyone can search, book and fly. Wheels Up Connect, Core, and Business memberships provide enhancements such as flight sharing, empty-leg Hot Flights, Shuttle Flights, Shared Flights, signature Wheels Down events, and exclusive member benefits from preeminent lifestyle brands.  The Company's ongoing Wheels Up Cares program aligns with philanthropic organizations and initiatives that affect and matter to the Company and its customers, members, stakeholders, families, and friends.  The Wheels Up Cares fleet is comprised of five custom painted Beechcraft King Air 350i aircraft; each plane serves as a flying symbol for a specific cause.