Mon, Feb 24, 2003
President's Visits No Longer Shut 'Em Down
That big sigh of relief you heard last week? That
was the owners of the two flight schools based at Killeen (TX)
Municipal Airport (ILE), who were very pleased (to say the least)
to find out that a four-nautical mile airspace exemption was
approved by the Secret Service. The exemption allowed them to
continue flight instruction during Presidential visits to the Bush
ranch in nearby Crawford, Texas.
"We’re finally going to get a chance to continue
business," said Richard Guy, Manager of Killeen Aero FBO and Flight
School. "It’s a lifesaver for us if they’re going to
honor it. We were honestly facing going out of business if the TFR
had continued to prevent us from operating (during presidential
visits Killeen Aero also operates a flight school in nearby Temple,
which is located 21 miles from the president’s ranch--well
inside the 30-nm TFR. "We now have a chance, if we know the
president is coming, to move airplanes from Temple to Killeen and
base out of here and still get flight training in," he said.
No More Short Finals
Rick Whitesell, chief flight instructor for Central Texas
College (CTC) Aviation Department, was similarly relieved.
"Everybody’s ecstatic," he said. "All the flight instructors
have been talking about it. We sure appreciate the letter EAA
wrote. You got a lot farther than we did."
Before Christmas 2002, CTC was still able to fly,
but not safely, Whitesell said. Pilots would have to turn base a
lot sooner when landing to the south, but the biggest problem was
checkrides. "You really didn’t want to send your students up,
having to turn over the hangar and land halfway down the runway,"
he explained. "It (the TFR) was just a disadvantage to the students
that were flying at the time. They had to go to other flight
schools just to do practice landings." CTC has about 110 active
flying students and about 125 students in the aviation program.
The airport ‘s runway lies outside of the 30-nm restricted
airspace, but by only 700 feet. EAA successfully argued that the
exemption would not adversely affect security for the president and
would enhance safety for pilots. The tentative FAA and Secret
Service approval was communicated in a letter from FAA program
director for air traffic planning and procedures Michael Cirillo
dated February 13.
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