Sun, Jan 17, 2010
New Airport Under Construction Near Panama City
The FAA will be testing instrument
landing equipment next week for the 10,000 foot runway under
construction at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport
near Panama City in the Florida panhandle.
The testing will fine-tune the ILS system for the new facility,
slated to open in May of this year. The runway has already been
extended by 1,600 feet from the original design, and construction
is expected to cost about $318 million by the time Southwest lands
its first flight there May 23rd.
Next week’s “test” is not so much a test as a
“data-collecting exercise,” Jeff Dealy, airport
relocation manager for Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR), told the
Panama City News Herald. “This is a major milestone for the
project,” he said. “And it’s all coming together
right on schedule.” KBR is the project construction
manager.
A specially-equipped FAA aircraft will fly multiple approaches,
gathering data on the ILS. The testing is required for FAA
certification of the runway. "The plane will spend a lot of its
time off-site testing the instrument landing systems,” said
senior program manager Roy Willett of KBR.
Dealy said crews have been working hard to meet the deadline for
Tuesday's exercise. Along with regularly scheduled service by
Southwest, the airport hopes to attract non-stop charter flights
from Europe to Florida's northern Gulf Coast.
The new airport's identifier will be "KEPC" when it opens in
May.
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