FRYEBURG – Oxford Aviation Inc. is one of four candidates vying for the job of managing the Eastern Slopes Regional Airport.

The other businesses that have applied to become the next fixed base operator, as general aviation airport managers are called, are Progressive Aviation LLC of Rochester, N.H.; Blake Aviation of Kennebunkport; and Cambridge Group LLC of Bedford, Mass.

The airport’s Executive Committee met Tuesday to review the applications.

“We’re not ready to release any short list yet,” said Joe Solari, chairman of the Eastern Slopes Airport Authority’s Board of Directors. Those serving with him on the executive committee are Conway, N.H., Town Manager Earl Sires and Tom Schaffner of Dearborn Precision Tubular Products Inc.

The town of Fryeburg owns the airport and leases it to the authority, made up of Fryeburg, Conway and 14 other towns in Maine and New Hampshire.

Jim Horowitz, owner of Oxford Aviation, was unavailable for comment Tuesday. Wanda Walker, a spokesperson at the aircraft refurbishing company, confirmed that “We have very enthusiastically submitted a bid.”

Horowitz, who began leasing space at the Oxford County Regional Airport in 1989, has been saying for years that his company has outgrown the airport’s 3,000 foot runway. Eastern Slopes Airport has a 4,200-foot runway, and there is room for expansion to the runway, according to Sires.

The airport, about three miles from Fryeburg village off Route 302, has been without a fixed base operator since December, when Neal Minschwaner shut down his Fryeburg Aviation business at the airport.

Sires said the Eastern Slopes Airport, with its ability to handle larger luxury chartered jets such as the eight-to-10 passenger Gulfstream jet, gives it a major advantage over smaller airports in the area. It has several hangars, and none of the candidates is asking for hangar expansions as part of the negotiations.

“I think in the next 10 years we’re going to see this airport transition from one that deals with strictly local aviation activity to one that is almost more of an outlying airport for the Portland area,” Sires said.

It is just these kinds of larger jets that Horowitz says he needs to build his business, but Oxford County commissioners have taken a dim view toward a runway expansion, saying it would be too costly.

A Federal Aviation Administration study commissioned last year by the county concluded that FAA funds would not be forthcoming for a runway expansion at the Oxford airport, since it’s within 30 miles of the larger Auburn-Lewiston airport.

Oxford Aviation, which employs around 40 people, pays $1,312 a month, or $15,744 a year, to lease two large hangars at the airport. The lease cost increases by 3 percent every five years until 2027, when the lease expires.

According to Web site information on Progressive Aviation, that company is a training and aviation company owned by a pilot, Matthew McDaniel.

The Cambridge Group is listed as an aviation consulting company; information could not be located on Blake Aviation.