Sky Harbour Group Corporation, an aviation infrastructure company building a US-wide network of home-basing solutions for business aircraft, has welcomed Will Whitesell as COO. Outgoing COO Alex Saltzman has entered an amicable separation agreement and will assist with transfer of responsibilities in good order. Loren Benedict has joined Sky Harbour subsidiary RapidBuilt as chief of operations. The company has also released an update to its estimated budget at its Dallas-Addison airport home basing campus project in Texas.

Whitesell brings more than 20 years of construction, development and senior management experience, most recently serving for five years as Suffolk Construction COO for the New York region.

CEO Tal Keinan comments: "As two years of increasingly intensive site acquisition efforts begin to bear fruit, Sky Harbour will face the challenge of dramatically scaling its manufacturing and development capacity, lowering total development cost and maintaining a decisive qualitative edge in its physical offering. Will's track record in managing parallel large-scale development projects, his deep corporate leadership experience and his aggressive mission-driven approach position him powerfully to help lead this next phase of Sky Harbour's growth. We are excited to welcome Will to the Sky Harbour team.

"Alex Saltzman's immeasurable contributions have helped to bring Sky Harbour to today's advantageous position. We are grateful for Alex's dedicated service, and knowing the value he will bring to his future endeavours, wish him great success."

Benedict joins RapidBuilt as chief of operations, and brings decades of manufacturing, construction and leadership experience in the pre-engineered metal building space (PEMB), including at Lefever Building Systems and DCB Construction. He is a US Army veteran with multiple combat and humanitarian deployments.

Keinan continues: "As Sky Harbour's development activity scales, in-house manufacturing will play an increasingly important role in reducing development time and cost, while increasing build quality. Loren is a seasoned PEMB professional and will play a leadership role in transforming RapidBuilt from a broad-spectrum PEMB company to a specialised manufacturer, optimised for efficiency, quality and seamless integration with Sky Harbour's design and construction teams. Sky Harbour is thankful to welcome another veteran to the team and plans to continue growing with the veteran community, one of our society's greatest under-tapped resources."

Sky Harbour has also released an update to its development budget for Dallas Addison (ADS) Phase 1, from an estimated range of $25-27 million to an estimated range of $30-32 million. The increase is largely due to owner-initiated improvements intended to enhance the quality and aesthetic of Sky Harbour's offering to residents and introduced as a result of learnings at existing Sky Harbour facilities.

In Q1 2024, the company intends to make cash contributions in the amount necessary to fund these estimated cost increases from unrestricted funds on hand at the corporate level into Sky Harbour Capital and the Obligated Group's construction fund. As in the past, the company will protect and support the funding sufficiency of the 2021 Sky Harbour Capital LLC Aviation Facilities Project as amended.