Altaport Launches Short-Term Hangar Rental Tech

The company is now turning to short-term hangar rentals, launching services on its management platform at Truckee Tahoe Airport (KTRK) in California that enable airports to monetize temporarily vacant space through on-demand rentals.

"This innovative hangar rental program allows airports and their tenants to list vacant hangars for use by transient aircraft operators, providing real-time booking options for nightly stays,” the company said in a statement. 

Altaport CEO Cory Cozzens said that his background has been beneficial in bolstering his understanding of the needs that airports and their end users have.

“My background is in aviation and was one of the founders of Surf Air,” Cozzens said. “Then [I] spent some time with Matternet, which does drone delivery service in the medical space, and then was with Airbus running their on-demand helicopter service. That experience is what led us to wanting to build this suite of solutions. In each of these roles, we were working closely with GA airports and FBOs, and the observation was that they generally didn’t have great solutions available to them. They are stretched in 50 different directions, their resources are limited, [and] they have critical roles to fill and [have to] facilitate a safe aviation environment and maintain financial sustainability.”

The current demand for hangars will continue to be strained as the users of airports continue to evolve, especially with the forthcoming advanced air mobility (AAM) entrants and others with aviation infrastructure needs. Altaport’s solutions help solve airports’ short-term challenges and position them well to react to the evolving landscape. 

“We looked at the current state of technology that was available to airports and saw strong demand from the incoming generation of airport managers who were saying, ‘Hey, why are we still doing things with paper and pencil?” Cozzens said. “Why isn't there a tech suite for us?”

Altaport’s first product offered was transient fee management software. Automation allows for efficiency gains for airport staff, in addition to increased visibility into the usage of their various resources. 

Truckee Tahoe Airport was the launch partner for the short-term hangar rental platform, a product that was announced in late January. Pilots can book overnight hangars that accommodate aircraft as large as a light jet through Altaport’s dedicated web page for the airport.  

“Truckee Tahoe Airport is excited to partner with Altaport to expand our overnight hangar rental program,” said Jeff Manasco, director of aviation at the airport. “By leveraging Altaport’s technology, we match tenants’ vacant hangar times with short-term rental needs through a seamless revenue-sharing model. Tenants love the opportunity to support the GA community while reducing their rent. As pioneers in general aviation, this is another step in our commitment to sustainable aviation. Who says airports can’t share and play nice?"

This new offering is uniquely positioned to positively affect the airport’s operations—something that pilots will benefit from as well. 

“Altaport exists to help innovative airports like Truckee optimize their relationships with transient operators,” Cozzens said. “This new solution is a testament to how technology can strengthen airport-transient connections—improving the operator experience, reducing administrative overhead, and unlocking valuable revenue opportunities for the airport.”

The opportunity to make revenue from existing hangar space is attractive to airports, many who would not find it readily feasible to develop new hangars. Truckee Tahoe serves as a case study for other airports who may have similar needs. 

“Truckee Tahoe is a fantastic airport and they’re always innovating,” Cozzens said. “And like many other airports, they’ve been dealing with a shortage of hangar space and trying to figure out how to address it. Our observation is that most GA airports that we speak to have a shortage of hangar space, and most are constrained in their ability to provide additional hangar space. And then Truckee has a particular challenge in that their deicing solution is [aircraft] being in a hangar. When they started looking at the situation with their hangars, they saw that as much as 30 percent of the space was sitting open on any given night.”

The impact of freed-up hangar space positively impacts both operators and airports alike. Pilots interested in renting hangars can do so through Altaport’s website, where payments are securely processed. Additional airports will be added to the platform once they are announced.