The Middle Tennessee State University Aerospace program is scheduled to move airport locations. The flight school is moving from Murfreesboro Municipal Airport to Shelbyville Municipal Airport, more than 40 minutes south.

MTSU flight school has been at Murfreesboro Municipal airport since the 1940s, but has recently been approved for a large-scale move in anticipation of accommodating its growing enrollment numbers in the years to come.

Another reason for the moving of the flight school is to lessen the air traffic above Murfreesboro. The MTSU flight school has to have sufficient runway space to conduct student flights, and sharing the runway with Murfreesboro Municipal might lead to problems in the future as growth occurs within the flight school as well as traffic at the airport.

The official announcement came in the fall of 2021, with the Tennessee General Assembly approving the $62.2 million budget in April of 2022. According to University President Sidney McPhee and the MTSU website, the official completion date of the entire flight school move will be in late 2025, with most of the flight school operations continuing in Murfreesboro until the final completion time.

The current plan is to break ground in the summer of 2023 for the all-new hangars, classrooms and offices that the flight school will inhabit down at Shelbyville Municipal. Dormitories are also in the plans for the remote campus.

This move will affect many MTSU students, as the aerospace program has over 1,000 majors, making it one of the biggest collegiate flight schools in the country.

While most currently enrolled students probably will not see the end of the move, it will impact future MTSU aerospace students, and will certainly impact the character of both the Murfreesboro and Shelbyville airports and the other operations housed there.

“The moving of the flight school is going to allow so many more available opportunities for students,” said MTSU senior professional pilot student Briana McDonald. “Having new facilities will provide an even more secure and successful future for the program.”

Some consider the move controversial, especially because of the distance of Shelbyville from the main MTSU campus in Murfreesboro. However, the move will offer much more room for the growing aerospace program, with more land and runway space for the fleet of 35 training aircraft, a fleet likely to further expand before and during the move to Shelbyville.