Audacity in the dust

Mojave Airport

It’s no exaggeration to say that Mojave is an iconic place – albeit not a very busy airport in the classic sense.

Over the past century, the global air transport system we enjoy today was built on the spirit of bold development, iconic machines and people with ambition and courage. One airport stands out as a place where you can you see the past, present and future interacting. Robert O’Meara reports on a visit to Mojave Air & Spaceport and his meeting with its CEO & General Manager, Stuart Witt.

About an hour and half north-east of Los Angeles, the motorway becomes very straight for quite a while as you find yourself in the middle of a shallow and very flat valley. There are very few houses and cars. The main feature of the landscape is an abundance of wind turbines and occasional signs with one word on them: Mojave.

Turning off the motorway, driving into Mojave, there are immediate reminders of how established, yet desolate the area is. A dusty old fighter jet and an even dustier old jet airliner sit side by side, to the left of the entrance to Mojave Air & Spaceport – dusty relics of the past. However, to the right of the same entrance, there is a nod towards the future, in the form of the billboard image of SpaceShipOne, the first test flight of the much-hyped Virgin Galactic.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Mojave is an iconic place – albeit not a very busy airport in the classic sense. It has no scheduled airline flights and precious little in terms of ‘passenger’ facilities. Paradoxically though, it’s also the place you are most likely to see large passenger aircraft parked en masse. It’s a distinctly surreal sight to look out on the airside at Mojave and see so many long haul aircraft (many with their airline livery still intact), without a single passenger or ground handler in sight. No movement at all. These big beasts of the sky that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase, which transported millions of people around the 4 corners of the earth innumerable times over a couple of decades and here they are now – grounded and ready for retirement in sunny California. I note the code on a Boeing 747 in Thai livery, which I’m nearly sure I saw parked at Stockholm-Arlanda, not so long ago. Oh the stories these aircraft could tell…

Business acumen beyond the boneyard

Mojave planes

It’s a distinctly surreal sight to look out on the airside at Mojave and see so many long haul aircraft (many with their airline livery still intact), without a single passenger or ground handler in sight.

But relying exclusively on ‘aircraft boneyard’ services isn’t an option. As some iconic airports in Europe know all too well, a reputation built on past glories and sentimental aviation geekery can certainly be useful, but it doesn’t pay the bills. At 3,300 acres, Mojave occupies the same amount of space as LAX, so a business strategy is vital. In that regard, the main things Mojave has going for it, are that 1. it’s very dry and 2. in the middle of nowhere.
With those two somewhat underwhelming advantages, it’s fair to say that to run an airport like Mojave successfully, you need a ‘can do’ entrepreneurial spirit at the helm – someone who sees the opportunity at the heart of a problem.

Enter Stuart Witt, the CEO & General Manager at Mojave. I’m standing in his office, taking a photo with my smartphone, when he arrives in through an airside door in the room. Wearing a brown leather pilot’s jacket and sporting sunglasses, he’s barely in the door when it’s all too obvious how much he fits the mould of the all-American hero. One side of his office is dedicated to his years as a fighter jet pilot and test pilot, complete with personalised messages from astronaut friends and more. His taste for the innovative, the never-attempted-before, is writ large on the wall for all to see. “Risk is absolutely necessary to the advancement of humanity,” he tells me, with calm authority, not too long into our discussion.

In conversation, it doesn’t take long to engage him on how his past informs his current job. He is clearly passionate about innovation and risk, showing me a magazine with ‘the only advert’ he has ever commissioned for the airport, on a back of an aviation magazine. The advert features a compelling overhead photo of the airport, with an exotic looking aircraft ascending above it with the word ‘PERMISSION’ written boldly over the upper half of the image. Most remarkably in the smaller text, it talks overtly about ‘Permission to Fail’. In the country where NASA’s boldest achievements were informed and underscored by the spirit of ‘Failure is not an option’, Mojave’s tagline throws down a gauntlet that goes in the other direction, echoing the playwright Samuel Beckett’s famous maxim “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Stuart Witt Mojave CEO

Stuart Witt, CEO & General Manager, Mojave Air & Spaceport: “Risk is absolutely necessary to the advancement of humanity.”

Witt took on the job at Mojave in 2002 and he shows no sign of being tired of it. In 2004, Mojave was designated the nation’s first inland spaceport, a status that he apparently had to fight tooth-and-nail in Washington DC to attain.

Since then, it has thrived – even during the worst recession in 3 generations. The airport has 10 space companies based at it (4 of which have been there since before 2002), along with others in light industrial development. It facilitates about 200 to 300 movements per day, 15% of which are test flights. Predictably enough, he isn’t really easy to engage on the aircraft recycling and retirement activities operating at the airport – although over the course of our meeting, he touches upon it from time to time.

50% of the airport’s total revenues are generated by services facilitating space companies at Mojave, so while the ‘boneyard’ services of aircraft storage and recycling still count, their place on the balance sheet at Mojave is diminishing as the airport further diversifies its activities.
One recent development which has helped generate additional revenues is the rail line connecting Mojave to some local industrial sites. Originally installed in the 1940s, it had fallen into disrepair. One of Witt’s first moves after his appointment was to invest $1.5 million into returning the rail line to service and adding some additional spurs. This has since proven to be a very useful and additional source of revenues for Mojave.

During our visit, some military aircraft stopped by to refuel – in a natural reflection of the sense of community there, the crew knew Witt personally – in fact, one of them was the son of a former test-pilot colleague of Witt’s, back in the day.

Asked about the long-term, Witt’s vision is to maintain Mojave’s principal focus on facilitating research & development, however some companies may seek to operate at Mojave on a regular basis and he feels that that is feasible.

Mojave Spaceport

The airport has 10 space companies based at it (4 of which have been there since before 2002), along with others in light industrial development. It facilitates about 200 to 300 movements per day, 15% of which are test flights.

I mention the new Spaceport facility in New Mexico, which has been built and is merely waiting for Virgin Galactic to start full time operations. A little bit piqued by the question I sense, Witt shrugs off the competition and says he concentrates on maintaining first-rate facilities at Mojave, telling me “I run my airport like Tiger Woods plays golf. I focus on my operations and I don’t think too much about the competition.”

That said, he does seem very informed about European space projects and developments underway in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. He speaks very positively about the Spaceport that has opened at Kiruna in Sweden and talks at length about how good the facility is and how its future should be bright, given the trend towards ‘experiential’ leisure and holidays.

Time’s up

Mojave spaceport

To the right of the entrance to Mojave Air & Spaceport there is a nod towards the future, in the form of the billboard image of SpaceShipOne, the first test flight of the much-hyped Virgin Galactic.

Witt undoubtedly talks a good game – as the CEO of Mojave, he has probably realised that Mojave is only as attractive as the story he tells about it.
But beyond the polished PR and the well-calibrated mystique, there does seem to be something genuinely exciting happening at Mojave. The hush-hush entrepreneurship underway; the big name regulars there such as Elon Musk, Harrison Ford, Paul Allen, Ratan Tata and Richard Branson; the test flights of custom-developed aircraft; the risks inherent in developing something still as new as orbital space flight for civilians (albeit, very wealthy ones); the fighter jets running exercises – these are just the things I heard about or saw while I was there on a very quiet day in late December.

Kevin Mickey of Scaled Composites confirms this impression. His company has been in Mojave for 32 years, during which time it built SpaceShipOne and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, among many other things. He told me “The great facilities, runway, taxi-ways and open spaces make Mojave a great place to do research prototype and flight test work. We are a community of engineers, scientists and pioneers who know that we are all often trying things that have never been done before. And so we support one another and there is a sense of community and spirit that is unique to Mojave. It is a hidden gem to aviation entrepreneurship that I’ve not witnessed anywhere else.”

During our meeting, Witt talked about civilian space travel having its ‘Wright Brothers moment’ right now and repeatedly mentioned that all progress only happens by overcoming risk. With a working culture like that at Mojave, I think that its place on the map is secure for future generations. History after all, is written by the victors.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *