North Carolina Pilots Take Action To Save North Carolina
Airport
AOPA says it's is using every resource necessary to save Horace
Williams Airport at the University of North Carolina in Chapel
Hill. More than 10,000 North Carolina members are stepping up in
full force to tell legislators to save the airport, according to
the advocacy group.
Members of the North Carolina General Assembly are meeting now,
and it is possible that the future of the airport could be decided
as early as this week. That is why AOPA is urging all pilots to
contact their legislators to tell House Speaker Jim Black and
Senate Pro Tem Marc Basnight one message: Keep Horace Williams
open!
Horace Williams is also the home of
the university's Area Health Education Center's (AHEC) Medical Air
Operations. UNC, which owns the airport, wants to close it to
develop the land and move AHEC's air operations to Raleigh Durham
International Airport (RDU).
"[As] a UNC medical faculty member who over the past 30 years
has seen the Area Health Education Centers system grow and flourish
as a health care resource to all North Carolinians, largely because
of the transportation facility provided by Horace Williams, there
is no viable alternative to Horace Williams; medical faculty
members will not drive 45 minutes to RDU," one member wrote to the
legislators.
Another member wrote, "Imagine a child from Ashe County who
needs to spend weeks at UNC hospital; or a grandmother on the Outer
Banks who needs chemotherapy at Duke periodically over a period of
weeks or months. Are they to drive four or five hours each
way?"
But the airport is used by more than AHEC's medical operations
unit. It often is used by prospective students visiting the college
and by parents visiting their children at UNC's Chapel Hill
campus.
"I am the parent of a rising Soph[omore] at UNC-CH. Two weeks
ago, I passed my checkride to become a private pilot. The primary
reason for doing so was to be able to visit her regularly. It would
be disappointing if Horace Williams was closed," another member
explained.
In May the university managed to sneak a last-minute
anti-airport provision into a Senate budget bill that would allow
the university to close Horace Williams almost immediately if its
(AHEC) Medical Air Operations moved to RDU Airport. To counter the
attack, AOPA worked with North Carolina House leaders to amend
their version of the budget to keep the airport open until at least
next summer.