Air Force Offers To Pay For Repairs To Las Cruces Runway | Aero-News Network
Aero-News Network
RSS icon RSS feed
podcast icon MP3 podcast
Subscribe Aero-News e-mail Newsletter Subscribe

Airborne Unlimited -- Most Recent Daily Episodes

Episode Date

Airborne-Monday

Airborne-Tuesday

Airborne-Wednesday Airborne-Thursday

Airborne-Friday

Airborne On YouTube

Airborne-Unlimited-04.22.24

Airborne-Unlimited-04.16.24

Airborne-FlightTraining-04.17.24 Airborne-AffordableFlyers-04.18.24

Airborne-Unlimited-04.19.24

Join Us At 0900ET, Friday, 4/10, for the LIVE Morning Brief.
Watch It LIVE at
www.airborne-live.net

Sun, Sep 11, 2005

Air Force Offers To Pay For Repairs To Las Cruces Runway

Damage Caused By Visiting Presidential Aircraft

Accepting some responsibility (and swallowing just a tiny bit of crow) for damaging a runway at the Las Cruces airport during a presidential visit last year, the Air Force has offered to pay the airport $623,000 for repairs -- which is much less than the $2.1 million that airport authorities had asked for.

The incident in question, as was reported extensively by ANN last year, all started when President Bush visited Las Cruces last August during his reelection campaign. At least two of the president's support aircraft, one C-32 (the military version of the B757) and a C-17 heavy-lift cargo plane, caused deep, half-mile long ruts in the soft asphalt surface of runway 4/22, upon landing on the longest runway of three at LRU.

To add insult to injury, airport officials maintain that they had told the Air Force several times in advance of the trip not to land the heavy aircraft there, as such an event was likely to occur.

While the city could not prevent the Air Force from landing there, it is still not clear why crews onboard those aircraft would want to land on that runway in the first place, as the soft surface could have caused significant damage to their aircraft, too.

Runway 4/22 has been closed to aircraft carrying more than 30 passengers since the incident. Smaller aircraft are strongly discouraged from utilizing on it, as well. On a popular airport website, the surface of 4/22 is described as "rutted and wavy."

According to Las Cruces Public Works Director Robert Garza, the settlement will not be presented to the city council until next month. No word yet on if the offer will be accepted... or if President Bush will be invited back to Las Cruces any time soon.

Some visitors who will be welcome at the airport are participants and spectators for the first annual Ansari X Prize Cup, scheduled to be held at the airport October 9th.

FMI: www.las-cruces.org/facilities/airport

Advertisement

More News

Airbus Racer Helicopter Demonstrator First Flight Part of Clean Sky 2 Initiative

Airbus Racer Demonstrator Makes Inaugural Flight Airbus Helicopters' ambitious Racer demonstrator has achieved its inaugural flight as part of the Clean Sky 2 initiative, a corners>[...]

Diamond's Electric DA40 Finds Fans at Dübendorf

A little Bit Quieter, Said Testers, But in the End it's Still a DA40 Diamond Aircraft recently completed a little pilot project with Lufthansa Aviation Training, putting a pair of >[...]

ANN's Daily Aero-Term (04.23.24): Line Up And Wait (LUAW)

Line Up And Wait (LUAW) Used by ATC to inform a pilot to taxi onto the departure runway to line up and wait. It is not authorization for takeoff. It is used when takeoff clearance >[...]

NTSB Final Report: Extra Flugzeugbau GMBH EA300/L

Contributing To The Accident Was The Pilot’s Use Of Methamphetamine... Analysis: The pilot departed on a local flight to perform low-altitude maneuvers in a nearby desert val>[...]

Classic Aero-TV: 'Never Give Up' - Advice From Two of FedEx's Female Captains

From 2015 (YouTube Version): Overcoming Obstacles To Achieve Their Dreams… At EAA AirVenture 2015, FedEx arrived with one of their Airbus freight-hauling aircraft and placed>[...]

blog comments powered by Disqus



Advertisement

Advertisement

Podcasts

Advertisement

© 2007 - 2024 Web Development & Design by Pauli Systems, LC