The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flights that have been happening almost daily in recent months at Akron-Canton Airport are soon coming to an end.
The private contractor handling Homeland Security deportation flights at the Akron-Canton Airport has announced its intentions to stop servicing those flights at the end of November, airport officials said Wednesday.
For nearly six months, prison buses have been arriving almost daily at the Avflight hangars on West Airport Drive to transfer Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees to Eastern Air Express, Air Wisconsin and Global X jets usually headed to Alexandria, Louisiana. Alexandria is the site of a major immigration detention facility and serves as a primary hub for deportations out of the country.
The flights have drawn protesters, who hold signs like “Ice out,” “Immigrants are welcome here,” and “Stop ICE flights.”
“Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) has been made aware that Avflight has notified the ICE flight operator, AEG Fuels, of its decision to discontinue providing ground-handling services at CAK effective November 30, 2026. ICE flights will cease from CAK beyond that date,” airport Vice President Lisa Dalpiaz said in an email Wednesday.
Avflight, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the private contractor that manages ICE flights, AEG Fuels based in Miami, did not respond immediately to questions.
Avflight is a major operator at the airport with additional hangars on the east side servicing dozens of private planes daily.
Deportation flights began at Akron-Canton at the end of April when Youngstown Warren Regional Airport closed a portion of its longest runway and tarmac for repairs.
Flights were expected to return there when work was completed in August, but that did not happen until a Sept. 29 collision of two Eastern Air Express planes outside the Avflight facility at the Akron-Canton Airport.
The tip of one wing scraped a stabilizer wing on the rear of the other and both planes had to be sidelined for inspection and repairs.
For two weeks, deportation flights were moved to Youngstown Warren until both 737s were repaired and removed from Akron-Canton. On the day before President Donald Trump was to arrive at Youngstown Warren for a campaign rally Oct. 12, planes were transferred from Youngstown Warren to Akron-Canton, as were daily flights.
Since then, at least 20 Eastern Air Express Boeing 737s and Air Wisconsin CRJ200s have landed at the airport in the city of Green, according to the fight-tracking application FlightAware.
The Western Reserve Port Authority, which manages the Youngstown Warren airport, said it was not aware of the Akron-Canton developments and referred questions to the private operator at the airport that serviced ICE flights in the past. The private contractor, JetsFBO, did not respond immediately, nor has it responded to any previous requests of the last two months.
Meanwhile, Akron-Canton officials learned that the bills for landing fees sent to the three charter companies will not be paid. The airport had accumulated more than $46,000 in landing fees through September.
The Federal Aviation Administration in a memo released in early 2026 said that private contractors working for the government would not be required to pay landing fees.
Airport officials said that the loss is insignificant.
The Akron-Canton Regional Airport Authority has been the only organization forthcoming with information since news coverage began in July, though officials have maintained an arms length from the deportation activity.
Officials said that as a public agency and partly funded by the federal government the airport cannot obstruct any legal business activity that fits with the airport’s purposes. However, they said that they had no intention of trying to convince deportation contractors to stay at the airport because it did not fit their long-term business model.
Doug Oplinger is a retired Akron Beacon Journal reporter and editor. He can be emailed at oplingerdoug@gmail.com