Coach James Franklin: State College Regional Airport needs expanded

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (WTAJ) – During a press conference for Penn State Football, Head Coach James Franklin talked about the team leaving a day early for their cross-country trip to take on USC because the State College Regional Airport wasn’t fit for the lengthy trip.

He said the team couldn’t fly out of State College due to runway length, size of the plane, weight of the plane and fuel on the plane. He added that they could have only flown out if they had stopped for fuel. Due to these issues, the team instead bussed to Harrisburg International Airport which added two hours to an already six-hour flight.

These issues do not usually occur as the team does regularly fly out of the airport for games. However, Franklin explained the incident took up an entire day so he chose to leave Thursday rather than Friday for the USC game.

Franklin said this topic was discussed with the Big Ten as teams considered joining but now the airport needs to make changes for the entire community.

“That’s one of the things I think we have to discuss is increasing the size of the runway here and the size of the airport for a lot of reasons, for the university, for the community, for businesses, for the athletic department, and for us now that we’ve, you know, decided to make this move as a Big Ten, to me, that something that we need to do,” Coach Franklin said.

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Franklin also added that the changes with the ability not to fly out of State College changed a lot for the team compared to other teams in the Big Ten.

WTAJ reached out to the airport for comment and they say a statement will be available at some point this week.

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