Jet owner has to pay airport
legal fees
‘Hush kit’ available for older
Stage II jets
By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer
The California multimillionaire
who sued and failed to force Hailey’s Friedman Memorial Airport to allow
his overweight, oversized luxury jet to operate there was ordered
Tuesday to pay $159,038 in lawsuit fees to the airport.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill
filed papers in Boise on Tuesday, April 6, instructing Ronald Tutor to
pay $88,094 in attorney fees and $70,994 for associated costs. The
judge, however, denied the airport’s claim for expert witness fees.
The $159,038 eventually will go to
the airport’s insurance carrier, Royal & Sun Alliance, which has already
covered $600,000 in legal costs incurred fighting the Tutor litigation.
The airport’s insurance policy covers up to $1 million in costs.
After airport authority attorney
Barry Luboviski announced Winmill’s order at the regular monthly meeting
of the airport governing board, a clearly jubilant airport manager Rick
Baird said, "This makes my day."
However, more legal costs lie
ahead. Tutor has ordered his California attorneys, Bailey and Partners,
of Santa Monica, to appeal Judge Winmill’s February decision rejecting
Tutor’s claim that his constitutional rights to travel had been violated
by the airport’s aircraft weight limit of 95,000 pounds.
Luboviski told the board that
Winmill’s award of fees "bodes well" for the airport in Tutor’s appeal
to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Tutor, CEO of Tutor-Saliba Corp.
of Sylmar, Calif., and who has a vacation home north of Ketchum, owns a
plush 737-sized Boeing Business Jet as well as a smaller Gulfstream III
jet, the latter that he has used for commuting to Idaho.
The larger of the two jets weighs
some 171,000 pounds on take off and more than 100,000 pounds on landing.
The Gulfstream is well below Friedman’s weight limit.
Winmill ruled that Tutor might
have suffered an inconvenience by the Hailey airport weight rules, but
no violation of his rights.
Other airport authority business
matters at the monthly meeting included:
-
Baird reported that more older
Stage II jets with noisier engines are showing up at the airport
outfitted with what is known as a "hush kit"—a large noise suppressor
attached to the rear of jet engines that looks like a large can. The
retrofit hush kit can cost upwards of $1.5 million, noted board member
Dr. Ron Fairfax, who is a general aviation pilot. Baird said the airport
routinely writes a letter of appreciation to owners of jets with the
noise suppressor retrofits.
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Some disagreement has
developed between Federal Aviation Administration officials in
Washington and FAA technicians in the field over whether the new
Transponder Landing System at Friedman is operationally acceptable,
Baird reported. The FAA rule is that TLS systems may only operate with a
3 degree offset—that is, approaching aircraft can be only 3 degrees off
center. But Baird said the Friedman TLS would allow pilots to be 10
degrees off center because of the nature of the approach procedure
between surrounding terrain. Baird said he’s optimistic that the
10-degree offset will be eventually approved.
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The board was briefed by Mead
& Hunt consultant Tom Schnetzer on $15.1 million in long-range
renovations and improvements at the airport that normally would be 95
percent funded by the FAA, with 5 percent in local funds. An exception
would be costs of an expanded terminal parking lot, which would be 100
percent funded locally. But Schnetzer hinted that because of tighter
federal budgets, the airport authority might want to "push every
(political) button you can" in Washington to make sure the funds are
available. Some airports have had their funds included in congressional
appropriations legislation, rather than relying exclusively on FAA
budget decisions.