Penn State football: Short runway means longer trip for Lions

The Penn State football team will leave Thursday from Harrisburg International Airport for its game Saturday at USC.

It’s a charter flight that Nittany Lions coach James Franklin would prefer to be making from State College Regional Airport.

“We cannot fly out of State College,” Franklin said Monday. “Based on runway length, size of plane, weight of plane (and) fuel on plane, we can’t get out of here unless we would stop for fuel. With that, we have to fly out of Harrisburg.”

The Lions will ride in buses from campus to the airport in Middletown, a 98-mile drive estimated at 101 minutes. The flight to the West Coast will be approximately 5.5 hours.

“You’re talking about adding two hours to your trip on top of the flight,” Franklin said. “That’s pretty much a full day. That’s one of the big reasons for leaving Thursday.”

He then made a plea to the powers that be to expand the runway at the State College airport.

“That’s one of the things we have to discuss, increasing the size of the runway and the size of the airport for a lot of reasons,” he said. “For the university. For the community. For businesses. For the athletic department and for us now that we decided to make this move as the Big Ten.”

Franklin said Maryland and Rutgers are in the Northeast like Penn State, but that they’re close to international airports.

Penn State has a bye next week before traveling to Wisconsin. Every Big Ten team traveling to the West Coast for a game this season has a bye before or after that game, except Illinois and Indiana.

UCLA has to travel to Rutgers next week after playing last week at Penn State.

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/penn-state-football-short-runway-034600429.html

Author : Reading Eagle, Pa.

Publish date : 2024-10-08 03:46:00

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