Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Air traffic volume increases at Friedman

Larger planes said to slow operations


By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Although air traffic at Friedman Memorial Airport has been on the rise, it was halted for long periods in recent days because of clouds and heavy snowfall. Photo by David N. Seelig

Friedman Memorial Airport is faced with a growing good-news-bad-news dilemma.

The good news is a trend of increased air traffic, which translates into fuel-sales revenues and parking-ramp fees for the airport.

However, the bad news is that the heavier volume is testing the ability and willingness of the airfield's traffic-control operation to continue handling traffic not designed for Friedman's capacity.

This was spelled out last week by Airport Manager Rick Baird at the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority's regular monthly meeting on Jan. 3, when he noted that the first very light jet, a small twin-jet Eclipse, had landed at Friedman. This new breed is expected to bring several thousand new high-speed aircraft into the skies and add to Friedman's traffic.

Baird said Friedman's latest annual traffic volume of 52,103 aircraft during fiscal year 2007, which ended in September 2007, is a bump over last fiscal year's 41,469.

The complication is that all airport traffic on the ground must be brought to a standstill and held in a parking area when an aircraft exceeding the field's design capacity is landing or taking off. Horizon Air's 74-passenger Bombardier Q400, with its high landing-approach speed and long wingspan, is one of those. Larger aircraft such as the Q400 are category CIII planes, whereas Friedman is below CIII capacity.

This "sterile" operating environment, Baird told the board, is not part of the contract with Serco, the company paid by the Federal Aviation Administration to provide traffic controllers. He said that although Serco has not thus far indicated any problems, Baird said Serco might find the added duty of juggling aircraft ground movemnts too much of a liability to continue.

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Serco's basic contractual responsibility and priority, Baird said, is "getting aircraft on the ground and into the air."

He said neither the FAA nor Friedman could force Serco controllers to create the "sterile" airport as part of their duties "if Serco decides controllers are too busy."

This, Baird said, would probably require Horizon to revert to using its smaller, 37-passenger Bombardier Q200, which is in design compliance with Friedman.

He said the FAA has said in the past that because the Q400 does not comply with the field's design capacity, "the Q400 can't operate indefinitely" from Friedman.

In a later interview, Baird said SkyWest Airline's turboprop Brasilia aircraft, which flies the Salt Lake City-Sun Valley route, is gradually being replaced with larger regional jets. The regional jets, he said, also are not designed for Friedman and have not been put on the airline's schedule into Friedman.

The FAA has now launched a study for a possible new airport site to replace Friedman. But approval and construction of a new field with the capacity for larger and faster aircraft is some years away, perhaps as far away as 2017.




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