SANDPOINT - The Sandpoint and Priest River airports have a new boss.

Pilot and retired Air Force Maj. Jim Kaiser has taken the controls, filling a new position created by county commissioners. Kaiser will help commissioners navigate the airports into the future.

Kaiser brings a lifetime of aviation enthusiasm, experience, education and training to the position. His education includes a bachelor's degree in airport management, a master's in aviation science, and more than 22 years of increasingly responsible military service in the U.S. Air Force that includes a mobile tanker airlift command and service in Afghanistan. With a commander's eye for detail to the job, he likes what he sees.

"This is a huge asset to the community," Kaiser said while sitting in Granite Aviation at the Sandpoint Airport last week, watching as a gleaming blue-on-white, single-engine plane rose into the hazy North Idaho sky. "It's an amazing feeling out here."

If you're a flying enthusiast - and there are more than average living in the area, according to Kaiser - that feeling is only going to get better once a new five-year Sandpoint Airport master plan, due to be published by the Federal Aviation Administration in August, is put to work.

"By the time 2019 hits it's going to be beautiful out here," Kaiser predicted.

The plan includes extending the existing taxiway the full length of the 5,000-foot runway, and replacing the existing 2-inch-thick asphalt surfacing with 4 inches of new asphalt. The FAA may also consider navigation upgrades, and new space-based GPS technology tweaks that will augment and enhanced existing navigational tools at the airport, allowing for more precision approaches. Those enhancements may be bundled into the planned improvements.

"We'll know more in a month," Kaiser said.

The phased construction is slated to begin in 2017, with 90 percent of the project's funding coming from the federal government, according to Kaiser. The remainder will come from whatever resources the county can find.

Upgrades will allow many jets that are now forced to land in Coeur d'Alene to fly directly into Sandpoint, increasing traffic volumes - and possibilities.

It's good news for local industry. Kaiser hopes to see more businesses like Quest Aircraft and Tamarack Aerospace take root at or near the airport. There's plenty of room.

"People that use aviation as part of their business will see more traffic because of it," Kaiser predicted.

It's also good news for local non-aviation-related businesses and entrepreneurs. Many of the airport's more affluent customers - celebrities and corporate movers and shakers and their families - will be able to land on the runway. According to Kaiser, that will lead to an increase in spending.

"The people who come in on these jets, they have some money," he said. "They're going to spend money in the community. They're going to invest up at Schweitzer, they're going to invest downtown. Their main business may be in downtown L.A., but they may want to get away for the weekend, so they jump in their jet and come up here."