Despite frustrations and setbacks, Friedman Memorial Airport officials have doggedly hoped for the past 15 years that a million-dollar weather landing system would finally provide airline pilots with better chances for landing during inclement weather conditions and thus avoid canceling flights into Friedman or being diverted to other cities.
It's not to be.
The effort to activate a transponder landing system has been abruptly ended by the Federal Aviation Administration, which has informed Friedman officials that it will remove the TLS hardware.
Though the TLS was installed in 2003 at FAA expense, the FAA had not certified and activated it. The airport needed a sponsor to pay for its operation and ground-based personnel to provide pilots with coding information for onboard flight instruments.
Though SkyWest Airlines expressed an interest, it declined to sign on as a sponsor. The airport's other air carrier, Horizon, showed no interest.
In a letter dated Aug. 26 to airport manager Rick Baird, FAA Flight Technology Division Acting Manager Leslie Smith also pointed out that "the TLS as currently installed resides within the runway safety area and cannot remain in place."
Baird told the airport authority during its monthly meeting Tuesday night that he believes the TLS will be removed within a month.
Board member Ron Fairfax, an aircraft owner and pilot, expressed appreciation to the TLS manufacturer, Navigation and Positioning Corp., for its efforts to have the system activated, to the airport staff for its persistence and to Friedman-based charter pilot Steven Garman for volunteering to conduct test approaches on the TLS.
TLS is a low-tech navigation aid compared to other systems that have been incorporated into new-generation corporate jets and larger airliners and allow pilots with proper training to make less restrictive approaches than does the TLS.
Garman, for example, said in an interview that GPS-coupled onboard instrumentation of his Lear 60 jet allows him to make landing approaches when the ceiling is 1,800 feet above ground level and horizontal visibility is three miles. Non-charter aircraft can land with less than three miles visibility.
In other actions:
· The board reversed the roles of authority Chair Martha Burke and Vice Chair Tom Bowman for the next two years—Burke was elected vice chair and Bowman chair, while Secretary Susan McBryant was re-elected.
· Manager Rick Baird reported that the Oct. 3 Sports Car Club of America time races on empty Friedman parking ramp areas were so successful that he believes the one-day event should be expanded to two days next year to accommodate more entrants and spectators. The event was designed to attract visitors to the valley.
· Baird also reported that the FAA's record of decision on site studies for a replacement airport for Friedman will probably be completed by January 2012.
