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True confession time: I have long been biased against airports at which the fuel is sold by a guvmint body, be it city, county, or other. This is based on years of flying general aviation aircraft in and out of (usually) smallish airports coast to coast and border to border.

This week, as Paul Harvey might say, I saw the other side of the story.

It was the Elizabethton (TN) Municipal Airport. I was there to meet a friend who flies, believe or not, an orange—repeat, orange, and I do mean totally orange—Cessna 210. Elizabethton has a population of not quite 14,000, so I expected to see the typical small airport with several Cessna Skyhawks, a Champ, and a decades-old Piper Aztec with a flat tire. I was amazed. I arrived to see a Pilatus depart, an MU-2 on the ramp, and a Citation in the hangar. This was an alive airport.

The fuel was sold by the city, but—surprise, surprise—the front counter and ramp employees were eager and friendly. They looked good in company shirts and treated us as if we were topping off a Gulfstream instead of putting 30-something gallons into an orange 210. As I waited, a line person reminded me that soft drinks were free.

The airport manager, Randy Musick, is a friendly sort, proud of his airport and evidently a prime source of the friendly service. He urged me to come back during the next NASCAR race at nearby Bristol, TN, suggesting that I just sit in a chair on the ramp and watch the frenzied activity. He promised the mix of corporate, race crew, banner towing, and pleasure craft would boggle the mind.

I am definitely going to take him up on that. I’ll sit in that chair and try to look as if I’m waiting on a Boeing Business Jet.

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… surfaces a voice of reason, Kent G. George. The director of Pittsburgh International Airport was hired this week to direct Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, following a series of missteps in a highly publicized search by Broward County commissioners. Their vote for George was unanimous – it should be.

George has the credentials; more importantly, he has the experience of today’s airport business, an arena in which airports must plan around a highly volatile airline industry and balance growth with vocal community opposition. In what could be called a crowning achievement for any airport director, he managed through the crisis – in very visible public view – that was dropped in his lap when US Airways decided to abandon its Pittsburgh hub and basically leave the Allegheny County Airport Authority holding the bag. Significantly, he was able to attract new low-cost air service, changing the business model of Pittsburgh International, while striving to maintain airport employment levels.

George survived the turmoil at Pittsburgh International and in the process reinvented the future of the airport, which suggests the folks at FLL may just have hired the person who can pull their airport out of its quagmire.

Much of the heated community opposition to FLL has been about growth, with the polarizing element a parallel runway extension for what is currently a predominantly GA runway. (The runway extension debate has been ongoing for two decades.) I had the opportunity a few years back to sit with former long-time FLL director George Spofford, who said then that his own crowning achievement at the airport was getting neighbors to “buy in” to the runway extension. After that, he said, he retired.

Problem was, the growth of low-cost air service at FLL thereafter was geometric, as was the population growth of surrounding cities. With the population growth came more vocal opposition.

What ultimately killed the runway extension “deal”, Spofford would relate, was the fact that the subsequent administration proposed an aggressive expansion to tie together the airport and the popular nearby port facilities, which feature a daily array of cruise ships arriving and departing. That initiative just served to reinvigorate the neighbors.

It wasn’t that the grandiose plan to connect the port to the airport was a bad idea, Spofford said, it was just that it was the wrong plan for this community. The neighborhood groups that had signed on for the runway extension felt betrayed, and their numbers had grown. Since that time, instead of FLL shining as a beacon of economic development and low-cost carrier growth, it has instead turned into the poster child of what can go wrong when a community and its airport no longer share a vision – angry cats on steroids comes to mind.

Calming the waters at FLL isn’t an easy task. The Broward County commissioners may have just taken the first important step.

Thanks for reading.

I have the following from normally reliable sources, but I cannot swear to it. For that reason, the name of the airplane manufacturer, the pilot, and the airport are left out.

A man operating as single pilot of a jet overshot a runway and ended up about 800+ feet off the other end of the runway. Initial reports say that he had an out-of-date medical, ignored audible warnings of an unstable approach, landed too long on a runway that was marginally short for the aircraft in the first place (when he finally touched down he had no possibility of getting it stopped), and incorrectly used the thrust reversers.

Folks, if true, here is proof—one more time—that the ability to pay for an airplane does not prove that one has the judgment, skills, and experience to fly it.

The pilot had his wife and daughter on board. If not for an alert bystander who helped them escape from the burning plane, they might not have made it. That seems like poor judgment to me, but what can you expect of a pilot who was operating without a current medical in a single-pilot jet?

By the way, this was not normally a single-pilot airplane, but the pilot “had obtained a waiver two months before the crash allowing him to fly it by himself.”

Good gawdamighty!

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Posted By John F. Infanger

Editorial Director, AIRPORT BUSINESS Magazine

… several years back. It sits one mile north of the U.S./Mexico border, south of San Diego, and is one of two general aviation airports which the city operates. A major highway crossing nearby is continuously flowing with a flood of trans-border truck traffic. And, standing on the Brown Field ramp, one can see a control tower off in the distance. It’s the tower for Tijuana’s Rodriguez International Airport. 

Since then, whenever the usual banter arises from discussions related to building a new airport in Southern California, I always recall my Brown Field experience. As I stood there then, I was struck by the notion that this is a perfect spot for constructing a dual-use international airport that could instantly solve the projected capacity issues at San Diego International. 

This week, the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority revealed that it is beginning a study to consider just that idea. According to the Authority, a “cross-border terminal” would allow passengers to park on the American side and enter the Tijuana airport through a dedicated walkway. Infrastructure Management Group was selected to perform a passenger demand study as a first step. 

Good move. The FAA, in its recently updated FACT 2 study predicting future system capacity needs, identifies San Diego International as one of six U.S. airports that need to be monitored between 2007 and 2015. 

These days we hear much about the changing airport environment and about looking at the business of airports in new ways. This is the type of out-of-the-box thinking that could prove the answer for at least one congested region. 

Thanks for reading. jfi                         

         

    

  

 

 

 

 

We have launched another teacher into space. Our last attempt was 21 years ago when Christa McAuliffe flew for only 73 seconds in what was the disaster called Challenger.

But there are differences. McAuliffe was seen as the teacher who was going up in the Challenger. Both before and after the disaster there was much criticism of putting a “civilian” into space. John Glenn, if I remember right, was particularly critical of the very idea.

Barbara Morgan—this week’s teacher in space—is seen as the former teacher who became an astronaut. She has been through the same training as other astronauts and has duties on the flight. She was actually the back-up teacher for McAuliffe in 1986 and watched the Challenger as it came apart.

There is also the huge difference—this flight did not come apart during launch. If it had, you’ve got to wonder if NASA, as we know it, could have survived.

The launch was a success, so we now have a new heroine and a great comeback.

As writer Rod Machado might say, that’s a good thing.

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As I write this, the TV news is all about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Everybody wants to know what caused it. The media are already searching through old records and have discovered that—allegedly—the bridge was found to be in need of repairs when examined in the recent past.

Whose fault is this, anyway?

I don’t know, but do know that this is part of the infrastructure for which the guvmint is responsible. Seems like everything in that infrastructure is falling apart, wearing out, and lagging behind.

Newt Gingrich—remember him?—made a speech recently in which he gives two comparisons of guvmint and the free market. To see the video you can go to: http://www.youtube.com–/watch?v=15D3ElV1Jzw.

Lord, love him or hate him, Old Newt always could ’splain things clearly and simply.

To throw in another example of my own, for $10 you can buy a prepaid calling card at a truck stop without providing your name, rank, date of birth, or Social Security number. You can then go most anywhere and call most anywhere else. The card connects to a computer which confirms that the card is valid, connects to the number you wish to call, counts the minutes you talk, calculates the charge, then deducts that amount from the balance on your card. All that for $10, and somebody makes a profit on the $10.

It’s an old story—the guvmint can’t do anything as cheaply and as efficiently as the free market. So why do we keep turning things over to the guvmint?

Beats the hell outa me.

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