In the shadow of RDU, an NC community seeks its own commercial air service
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- Business and visitor groups seek daily nonstop flights between Moore County and Dulles.
- Business groups trying to raise $3 million to guarantee revenue for the first two years.
- Moore County Airport would retrofit terminal and add parking but can handle regional jets.
The hundreds of people from the Pinehurst area who catch an airline flight each day must first drive to the closest commercial airport. For most of them, that’s an hour or more up U.S. 1 to Raleigh-Durham International.
Now business and visitors groups are mounting an effort to persuade an airline to begin daily nonstop flights to and from Moore County Airport, about 5½ miles from the front porch of the Pinehurst Resort.
Moore County hasn’t had commercial air service since Delta Air Lines ended short-lived flights to Atlanta nearly 20 years ago. Supporters say the area’s mix of affluent retirees, golf-related tourism and a growing defense industry more than justify restoring airline service.
“Pinehurst already has all the amenities of a much larger town, between the health care, the golf, the restaurants, the retail,” Mickey Foster, CEO of FirstHealth of the Carolinas, the local hospital system, says in a promotional video. “I think the only piece that now is missing is can we get commercial air.”
The goal is to get an airline to offer daily nonstop flights between Moore County and Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., said Natalie Hawkins, president of the Moore County Economic Development Partnership. Hawkins would not disclose the airline’s name, but Dulles is a major hub for United.
The business groups are now trying to raise $3 million that would be used to guarantee the flights generate a certain amount of revenue over the first two years, Hawkins said. Any quarter the service fell short, the airline could dip into the fund to make up the difference, she said.
So far, businesses and some individuals, led by the Pinehurst Resort and the U.S. Golf Association, have pledged $1.5 million toward the fund. The Moore County Airport is also applying for a federal grant from the Small Community Air Service Development Program.
If the effort succeeds, the airline would begin offering a single daily round-trip from Dulles next spring, Hawkins said.
“The concept is a midday turn,” she said. “You would have the flight coming in from D.C. mid-morning, so if you needed to get an afternoon golf round in, you could. And then leave mid-afternoon after lunch, so if you had a morning round on your day of departure, you could get that in as well.”
A long history of commercial flights from Pinehurst
The effort to restore air service to Moore County began last year with a study to determine how many people from the Pinehurst/Southern Pines area were flying and which airports they used.
Using federal data, the study found that 1,275 people in ZIP codes within a 30-minute drive of Moore County Airport were boarding flights each day on average, and that 82% of them were using RDU. (The next largest share, 12%, were driving to Charlotte, while only about 5% were going through the closest commercial airport, Fayetteville Regional.)
The Moore County Airport has had commercial air service for much of its history. From 1945 to the late 1960s, Piedmont Airlines flew out of what was then Pinehurst-Southern Pines Airport. Area residents could fly to and from Charlotte on USAir Express flights from 1991 until just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
After Delta pulled out, the airport retrofitted its terminal for general aviation, so it now must restore facilities for handling baggage and a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint, says Rick Cloutier, the airport director.
The 6,502-foot runway is long enough for regional jets, Cloutier said.
“The only thing we really have to work on is some additional parking, which we have identified, and convert the GA terminal back to a commercial terminal,” Cloutier said.
Besides being convenient for residents and visitors, commercial air service would help businesses recruit talent and help the region lure businesses, Hawkins said. Often businesses considering the Pinehurst/Southern Pines area say they need to be within a certain distance of a commercial airport.
“And we are right on the cusp of meeting that requirement a lot of times, with RDU being right at an hour, hour and 15 minutes,” Hawkins said.
Greg Brock, owner and CEO of Titan Echelon, a defense contractor based in Southern Pines, lent his voice to the Fly Moore County promotional.
“The amount of money that just my little tiny company here is pushing into Raleigh all the time through flights, through rental cars, all that could be right here,” Brock says.
This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 9:28 AM.
