Airports across Saskatchewan are getting a lift, and the one in Carlyle is among them thanks to the Community Airport Partnership program, or CAP.

In total, $700,000 is dished out annually province-wide for various improvements and repairs on the surfaces and infrastructure. This year, $14,920 will go towards crack filling and line painting on the single runway and apron in Carlyle.

"It costs a lot of money to pave these runways. Our runway, we spent $565,000 on it 8 years ago, repaving the entire runway. What you need to do to push that next paving project off a few years is to keep the cracks filled, and in this country, pavement cracks," stated Duncan Brown, the volunteer Airport Manager and member of the Carlyle Airport Authority, as well as a member of the Carlyle Flying Club.

"We have applied to this (CAP) program several times over the last eight or ten years, and we've received a lot of money from them. There's a lot of reasons why we have such a good airport in Carlyle, but the CAP grant is certainly one of them, and the other one is that we get very good support from our local businesses and individuals."

He believes that they've put well over one million dollars into the airport in the past eight years, and around $300,000 has come from the CAP program.

"Keeping a viable airport in a small town like Carlyle is, we think, essential. In fact, I had a business owner, one of the biggest employers in the area, tell me a few years ago that if we didn't have an airport where they could their twin-engine airplane at, they would've located their business elsewhere. I think that's just an example of why a viable airport is necessary in a small town like Carlyle, or any place."