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I continue to read the thread for the day that the Noonans get to post - APPROVED!
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Thank you. We look forward to posting that message as well. And it is coming. The proper branch and proper level of the FAA now has
complete control of this process and when it concludes in a few months, we fully expect not just to be vindicated, but to have the full weight of the FAA behind us moving forward.
To help better explain the process that is occurring within the FAA now though, I'll offer this information.
There are grassy areas directly adjacent to the runway on each side of it referred to as "object free areas", meaning that their can't be any permanent structures there. The area is intended for departing or landing aircraft that may lose directional control and veer off the runway. The FAA doesn't want a maintenance shed or even a stationary parked car there, which makes perfect sense.
Now the FAA (Flight Standards) has clearly established that parachutists are allowed to use that area to land and clear away from. The ADO and LAA want to label us "objects" and say that we have no right to be there. The problem with that "safety concern" is two fold:
1) It is already an established protocol that has been in existence for about 65 years now, to no ill effect of person or property.
2) The actual people raising the "Safety concerns" are neither aviators nor skydivers. The FAA agents of the ADO are not pilots, they are engineers that have never had to interact with a skydiving operation before in this capacity and have misapplied their role.
The loudest vocal minority with "safety concerns" is of course the airport itself. An LAA board comprised of not a single current aviator along with an airport manager that has never worked on an airport with skydiving. For the airport manager's entire tenure at LCI, there has never been a skydiving operation. Why is this such an important fact? When the LAA and the airport manager cite their concern for parachutists landing in an "object free area" they are doing so without any practical experience or knowledge of the effect of us doing so.
Why is that lack of knowledge so important?
If they were truly knowledgable about the subject, they would know that in the 65 years that parachutes have been landing on airports around the country, including in the object free areas of those airports, there have been approximately 55,000,000 skydives made during that time frame.
Now........how many times in 65 years and 55,000,000 skydives, has a parachutist made contact with an airplane on the ground?
Once. Yup. Only once.
The chances of a parachutist interfering with an aircraft in the object free area of the airfield is about 1 in 55,000,000 over a period of 65 years.
But wait....... the one instance, didn't even occur in an object free area, it happened on the skydiving facility property away from the object free area. But wait....... it was a solo student parachutist who later admitted that she ignored her primary landing area and wanted to land in front of her friends and family. But wait.........it was the skydiving aircraft she landed in front of. The important item here as it pertains to the LAA's "safety concerns" over the object free area? It had nothing to do with the object free area.
So...........using all those facts...........in 65 years and 55,000,000 skydives, a skydiver landing and vacating that feared object free area has never caused a problem. Ever.
Yet the LAA and the airport manager have "safety concerns".........so much so, that the airport manager actually drafted a letter to other regional airport managers, another "call to action" if you will, asking the other managers to band together and contact their congressmen if they felt safety should prevail over lobbying..........The odd thing about the email is that it didn't include anyone from the FAA in the addresses.......
Funny that. A local airport attempting to suggest that the FAA is not capable of properly assessing safety standards and that the FAA could cave in to lobbyists?
Well, the good news is that the proper branches and levels of the FAA have a copy of that email and they will address it when the time is right.
Makes you wonder though? Remember that "transparent process" that the LAA is quoted as providing us from the beginning? Do you think that sending an email to other airport managers and leaving off the very FAA they are tasked to serve, is transparent?
The irony in all this is that the object free area is simply an alternate area for us. We intend to land in the small grassy areas between the hangars and the taxiways..........
Will we occassionally land on the object free area? Perhaps. But it will be on the side of the grass furthest away from the runway. That's the way it's already being done around the country, without ill effect to person or property.
And lastly, to add some comic relief...............
In that horrendously erronious report issued by the ADO, they went so far as to state that the "proximity of the Belknap mountains" contributes to variable and turbulent wind conditions. They even quoted a public comment that "katabolic winds" affect the ability of jumpers to predict their landing areas.............lol.
Gunstock peak: 2,245ft MSL
Mount Everest: 29,035ft MSL
Why is that so comical to me?
I hold a world record for the highest parachute landing on to the Kala Pattar plateau at 17,192ft MSL. Right beside Mount Everest.
Mount Everest: The world's highest mountain creating the world's most turbulent and unpredictable weather and winds on the planet. I landed my parachute beside Mount Everest on a plateau LZ the size of a soccer field beside the Khumbu Glacier (a mile wide block of ice that is filled with 1000ft crevasses and jagged ice out croppings).
Gunstock Mountain: A ski resort a few miles away from the airport...........turbulent winds...........really?
http://www.vimeo.com/8012784
Blue skies to all and to all a good flight,
Tom