Posted on 03/14/2004 7:59:45 AM PST by Archangelsk
Airport expansion takes flightBy AARON LONDON Staff Writer
Last update: 14 March 2004
BUNNELL -- The sky might be the limit for pilots taking off from the Flagler County Airport, but county officials draw the line at forcing people to give up their property to expand the facility.
County commissioners reviewed an updated master plan last week for the airport that included five scenarios for growth.
In the end, commissioners decided to pursue the most ambitious option, a $28.4 million, 20-year plan to move the airport's main runway 400 feet south and lengthen it by 2,000 feet, begin construction of a control tower and add instrument landing approach technology to the airport.
The new runway would be 7,000 feet, which is required by many insurance carriers covering corporate jets. While supporting the plans, commissioners insisted that the impact of expansion on adjacent residential neighborhoods be minimized as much as possible.
Airport Manager Jim Jarrell said commissioners support the plan as long as it doesn't mean having to force residents from their homes.
Jarrell said eminent domain proceedings to acquire off airport land will not be considered "now or in the future."
Even with those protections, residents close to the airport still have some concerns.
For the past six years, Richard Kennedy has spent his winters in a house on Zebrawood Court in Palm Coast. While he said the warm Florida sun has its advantages, living close to the Flagler County Airport has not been a high point of living in the Sunshine State.
"Through the weekdays, it's all planes, in and out all the time, making a lot of noise," he said. "I didn't even realize the airport was over there."
Built in the 1940s as a training facility, the county airport has seen a big jump in operations -- defined as take-offs and landings -- in the past 10 years. In 1990, the airport recorded more than 155,000 total operations. In 2001 the number increased to more than 202,000.
Much of the airport activity comes from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which is building a headquarters for its Commercial Airline Pilot Training program at the airport.
Seventy percent of take offs and landings at the facility are by student pilots from the university, Jarrell said.
The master plan update is the first since 1997. The Federal Aviation Administration requires general aviation airports to update plans every five to 10 years. Local costs of carrying out the updated plan would be $710,000, representing 2.5 percent of the total and would come from airport operations, not local taxes. Ninety-five percent of the cost would be paid by the FAA, with the Florida Department of Transportation kicking in another 2.5 percent.
For Commissioner Pat McGuire, the additional safeguards for residential neighborhoods was a key aspect of the plan.
He said he is sympathetic to noise concerns and other complaints, but that the airport has been there long before residential neighborhoods were built.
"If you move next to an airport and you complain, shame on you," he said. "If you move next to an airport that expands to you, shame on the airport."
Just what we need--lots more unemployable pilots. Sometime these baby flyers might notice who's really taking advantage of them...
The airport in question the new/expanded runway would be 11 - 29. In the picture it's the one that runs from SE to NW. As you can see, there is a non-precision approach already in place on 6 - 24 (GPS-A) and I imagine, given the 20-year time frame, that a precision approach will end up being a GPS/WAAS/LAAS affair.
Are you figuring flying teachers in with that wave of new jobs?
\ "If you move next to an airport and you complain, shame on you," he said. "If you move next to an airport that expands to you, shame on the airport."
A distinction without a difference.
Airports, for some reason, never plan for the certainty that they will expand, and morons moving next to one never see the obvious either. Common sense would dictate that both must be aware od the other and assume that both will expand.
The real tragedy is when residential development is allowed to expand into either the approach or the takeoff end of existing airports.
You are now officially on the GA defecation list.
So the pilot was supposed to land on a human on the ground, to break his fall? I missed that in the manual.
This one will be great to bring to Town Hall and show the mayor.
Much like mud wrestling a pig. The pig loves it and everyone gets dirty.
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