[TheNoonans]

Update:

The directors level of the FAA continues to work with me and they continue to proactively contact me every few days with new questions and items. The free flow dissemination of facts and evidence has been nothing short of exceptional.

We are in the home stretch on this one. Trust me. Not only vindication from our perspective, that the Laconia Municipal Airport can sustain a skydiving operation and that the LAA, who have no background in aviation safety assessments, despite their "priority or responsibilities"......., will find out all too soon what can and cannot be accommodated on the government's federally funded airport.

If you have a trike, a glider, a power paraglider, or any other aeronautical vehicle that you want to fly into or out of Laconia, you are about to be given a legal and fair opportunity to present your case to the FAA, not the LAA, regarding what can and cannot be safely accommodated.

After all, the FAA, not the LAA, are the experts when it comes to safety.

Now, one more item to mention. I have posted a few times in this thread before that the actions of the LAA have put the NHDOT Department of Aeronautics in a difficult situation, a situation that could very well result in the removal of the state's "block grant" status regarding federal funding.

Well, I brought that point up to the FAA, that the LAA was shown multiple times to be discriminating against us, and that those discriminations were brought to the NHDOT Dep of Aeronautics and nothing was done. We believed (correctly so it would seem) that the NHDOT Dep of Aero, was responsible for ensuring LAA compliance with the federal funding grant assurances, as after all, they were the ones doling out all that money to the airport. And guess what? I was pretty much spot on in my assumption.

Here is where it gets interesting. The NHDOT Dep. of Aero, has continued to fund an airport that was clearly shown to have violated it's federal funding grant assurances. The airport broke the agreement they entered into and then the NHDOT Dep. of Aero continued to fund them anyways.

In this day and age of budget responsibility, do you think when I brought that irony up to the FAA that it fell on deaf ears? I didn't think it would either.....

So now because I was able to document to the FAA that the LAA discriminated against us and that the NHDOT Dep. of Aero was informed about it and did nothing to bring them back into compliance, the "block grant" status of the NHDOT Dep. of Aerro is being investigated by the FAA.

What does that mean to airports across the state that want funding? Nothing really. If the "block grant" status is removed, airports across the state can still request the same level of funding and receive the same level of funding. The only difference is they will request the funds directly from the FAA, like 43 other states currently do and the only change in policy will be that the FAA will ensure the airport's compliance with their funding grant assurances before doling out the money.

So it's a win/win really. I offer you that explanation in case anyone from the other side tries to distort the facts. My version is fact based.

With that, our next step is of course Congress. We want to make sure the people representing us in Congress are fully briefed on what is going on. The meeting is already scheduled for later this week.

I'll be sure to post the results of the meeting next week to keep you in the loop.

As always, we remain an open book of facts and actions.

Blue skies to all and to all a good flight,
Tom