Airport Getting Mixed Signals From Federal Aviation Admin.
August 13, 2019 at 11:27 p.m.
By David [email protected]
At the Board of Aviation Commissioners meeting Tuesday, Airport Manager Nick King gave the engineer’s report on behalf of Ken Ross, NGC Aviation Consultants, who was unable to attend.
King said that Monday morning the FAA “reached out to us saying that the FAA wanted us to go and do survey work and measuring, and they wanted us to go out and survey fictional points that haven’t been constructed, created or anything else yet” for projects in the Airport Layout Plan.
“I’m frustrated. Ken is frustrated because we were told last fall: Make a plan and then once the plan has been approved, the Airport Layout Plan, then we will move forward and execute the plan,” King said.
He said he and Ross have submitted everything they needed to in order to complete the planning document “and we don’t have that information back for the Airport Layout Plan yet and they’re already asking us to go out and do site work and survey work for projects that aren’t going to come up for five or six more years, and those are just IF they get funded by the FAA.”
Ross and King are “really confused” by what the FAA was asking for. King said they responded to the FAA and were told Gary Wilson of the FAA was going to look into it more and figure out why the Obstruction Evaluation/Airport Airspace Analysis team was looking for that information. King said the OEAAA looks at altitudes, airspacing, patterns and similar information at airports.
“Until they sign off on the ALP, we can’t really move to the next step of the plan for next year,” King said. “So we’re getting very confusing remarks back from them because they’re asking us to do steps three and four and they haven’t even given us comments back from steps one and two. And so we’ve sent a response back. We haven’t received anything back from them. We’re guessing that it’ll be the end of this week when they’ll have some more information for us.”
Dan Robinson, board member, summed up the FAA’s problem by stating, “This department over here thinks this department over here has already approved steps one and two.”
King agreed, saying it’s come down again to the cart being put before the horse by the FAA.
He said they’re struggling to figure out where some of the FAA’s comments are coming from, but hopes it was just an inter-office error that the FAA will correct.
“I have a feeling that the ALP will be – at least through the airspacing portion – in the next four to five days. So hopefully, hopefully by the next meeting we may have the ALP airspace, which will take us to the final phase, and we may actually be able to get that approved and finished by the end of the year,” King told the board.
“When you’re relying on the FAA, I’m not going to hold my breath,” he finished.
King then gave a big thank-you to the city’s wastewater and stormwater departments.
“They have been helping the airport clean all of our storm drains for the last few months. As their teams have time in-between projects and in-between other areas of the city they’ve been working on, they’re actually coming out to the airport and cleaning all of the storm drains that we have,” he said.
The drains are under the ramp, taxiways and runways. King said the drains haven’t been cleaned in over 35 years and the airport can’t find any records that they’ve been cleaned out at all.
“We’re finding pipes and structures underground that we have no record of anywhere,” he said.
The pipes are being filmed on video and mapped, as well as cleaned.
“So that once they are finished with this project, later this fall, we will actually have storm lines that will hopefully drain water to where it’s supposed to go,” King said.
Some of the found drains are 75 to 100% full of sand and dirt from years of use. He said they’ve only found two or three small piping failure so far, but none of it has been under pavement so they should be “easy” fixes. The street and wastewater departments will be able to go out, excavate some dirt, fix the pipe, dump the dirt back on top and plant some grass.
“It’s been invaluable to the airport to have them come out and help us figure out why we were having some of the issues we were having,” King said.
Some times last year, he said the airport would have 8 to 10 inches of standing water on the ramp.
Longtime board member Gene Zale said, “I can’t remember them even mentioning drainage when we were putting in the east/west runway. I just don’t recall ever even talking about it. That’s news to me.”
At the Board of Aviation Commissioners meeting Tuesday, Airport Manager Nick King gave the engineer’s report on behalf of Ken Ross, NGC Aviation Consultants, who was unable to attend.
King said that Monday morning the FAA “reached out to us saying that the FAA wanted us to go and do survey work and measuring, and they wanted us to go out and survey fictional points that haven’t been constructed, created or anything else yet” for projects in the Airport Layout Plan.
“I’m frustrated. Ken is frustrated because we were told last fall: Make a plan and then once the plan has been approved, the Airport Layout Plan, then we will move forward and execute the plan,” King said.
He said he and Ross have submitted everything they needed to in order to complete the planning document “and we don’t have that information back for the Airport Layout Plan yet and they’re already asking us to go out and do site work and survey work for projects that aren’t going to come up for five or six more years, and those are just IF they get funded by the FAA.”
Ross and King are “really confused” by what the FAA was asking for. King said they responded to the FAA and were told Gary Wilson of the FAA was going to look into it more and figure out why the Obstruction Evaluation/Airport Airspace Analysis team was looking for that information. King said the OEAAA looks at altitudes, airspacing, patterns and similar information at airports.
“Until they sign off on the ALP, we can’t really move to the next step of the plan for next year,” King said. “So we’re getting very confusing remarks back from them because they’re asking us to do steps three and four and they haven’t even given us comments back from steps one and two. And so we’ve sent a response back. We haven’t received anything back from them. We’re guessing that it’ll be the end of this week when they’ll have some more information for us.”
Dan Robinson, board member, summed up the FAA’s problem by stating, “This department over here thinks this department over here has already approved steps one and two.”
King agreed, saying it’s come down again to the cart being put before the horse by the FAA.
He said they’re struggling to figure out where some of the FAA’s comments are coming from, but hopes it was just an inter-office error that the FAA will correct.
“I have a feeling that the ALP will be – at least through the airspacing portion – in the next four to five days. So hopefully, hopefully by the next meeting we may have the ALP airspace, which will take us to the final phase, and we may actually be able to get that approved and finished by the end of the year,” King told the board.
“When you’re relying on the FAA, I’m not going to hold my breath,” he finished.
King then gave a big thank-you to the city’s wastewater and stormwater departments.
“They have been helping the airport clean all of our storm drains for the last few months. As their teams have time in-between projects and in-between other areas of the city they’ve been working on, they’re actually coming out to the airport and cleaning all of the storm drains that we have,” he said.
The drains are under the ramp, taxiways and runways. King said the drains haven’t been cleaned in over 35 years and the airport can’t find any records that they’ve been cleaned out at all.
“We’re finding pipes and structures underground that we have no record of anywhere,” he said.
The pipes are being filmed on video and mapped, as well as cleaned.
“So that once they are finished with this project, later this fall, we will actually have storm lines that will hopefully drain water to where it’s supposed to go,” King said.
Some of the found drains are 75 to 100% full of sand and dirt from years of use. He said they’ve only found two or three small piping failure so far, but none of it has been under pavement so they should be “easy” fixes. The street and wastewater departments will be able to go out, excavate some dirt, fix the pipe, dump the dirt back on top and plant some grass.
“It’s been invaluable to the airport to have them come out and help us figure out why we were having some of the issues we were having,” King said.
Some times last year, he said the airport would have 8 to 10 inches of standing water on the ramp.
Longtime board member Gene Zale said, “I can’t remember them even mentioning drainage when we were putting in the east/west runway. I just don’t recall ever even talking about it. That’s news to me.”
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