Air Travel on Here and Now

In regard to safety, I thought your listeners should know that at many if not all of the smaller airports around the valley, do not have a fire department on site and rely on the nearest available fire units for aircraft emergencies. The F.A.A. does not require C.F.R. (Crash Fire Rescue) on site, for the certification level of these airports. This in turn results in longer emergency response times and higher risk to those utilizing these facitlities, and those working there.

A number of these airports have small regional airlines that serve there, and some have restored military jet aircraft based there. Many have very large corporate jets that in size rival some smaller airline commercial jets.

Should not the economic benefit derived from these facitilies be weighed against the increased risk of flying there? I suppose not, or at least not until there happens to be a catastophic event.

I operate a helicopter tour and charter company under a single pilot Part 135 certificate. Because I'm such a small operator, I'm able to offer my services at a considerably lower price than my competitors. I like to say that I survive by "living off the crumbs" left by larger operators in the valley.

Helicopters are, by far, the most efficient way to travel distances less than 100 miles. We offer point-to-point transportion that is not possible with airplanes and is much faster than dealing with valley automobile traffic. For example, I can fly a passenger from Mesa to Glendale in about fifteen minutes. This is clearly impossible by car.

Although I can operate out of any valley airport, there are few helipads in the Phoenix area. The ones that exist are either at hospitals (for emergency medical transport only) or controlled by a few large organizations. Unreasonably high insurance requirements make it impossible for most operators to utilize the privately operated helipads. This severely limits the utility of helicopters for the point-to-point transporation they're best for.

Robinson Helicopter company markets an inexpensive, eay-to-install, safe rooftop helipad that could easilly be installed and utilized on rooftops throughout the valley. It has been successfully installed at locations in many cities worldwide.

As Phoenix grows, I believe that helicopters -- if given sufficient landing opportunities -- can help government officials (such as the governor), business people, and others with limited time to waste on cross-valley transporation.

More comments of a more general nature....

As a general aviation pilot, I am often appalled by the misleading stories I hear in the media regarding the safety of air travel. Air travel continues to be among the safest ways to travel. Yet the media continues to splash headlines about every little aircraft-related incident, making it seem as if a person is taking his life into his hands by stepping into an aircraft.

As for noise issues, I need to remind all listeners that every single airport listed on this site for inclusion in this story existed in its current location BEFORE developers started planting their subdivisions around them. If someone is stupid enough to buy a house near an airport, he has no right to complain about noise. After all, do people living near freeways complain about noise? What's the difference here?

Question:
I would like to know what the airport plans to do in regard to air & noise pollution.

The Sky Harbor Facility produces 10’s of thousands of tons of hazardous pollutants each year. I would like to know if Sky Harbor has any plans to make themselves and the companies that operate there more environmentally friendly. With all the talk of global warming I think it only right that the City of Phoenix with Sky Harbor do there part.

Also I would like to comment on noise pollution. I don’t believe Sky Harbor is playing by the rules to which they agreed to while the 3rd runway was being asked for. If Sky Harbor enforced the approach & take-off path, that would be the air space above the Salt River, not north and south of the river. They could go along way in becoming a much better neighbor.

Have any studies been done concerning health issues from jet fuel exhaust on airport employees and area residents?

What plans are there for folding Luke AFB, when it closes, into the local aviation picture? It will close as the newer fighters (F22 & F35) are going to be based out of Florida.

Neil Peters

Question; Any plans for a 4th runway in the near future to ease airline back-ups?

Regarding recycling, there do not seem to be many recycling trash containers in the terminals for paper/glass/etc. Any plans to increase recycling receptacles?

Why is there no exit for the airport off of the 143 southbound? Seems like there should be one.

Do you have any information on the airline employment status (specifically, pilots) at Sky Harbor, Scottsdale Airport, Williams Gateway and other surrounding airport facilities? I see so much construction and expansion, but not a huge increase in air transport personnel. As home to Pan Am Flight Academy and numerous other flight schools, finding a piloting job in Phoenix has posed a difficulty. Is the air community doing anything to address the number of qualified commercial pilots which has flooded the Phoenix air market? Thank you.

Probably the most one sided, public relations snow job, show that you've ever done. Where are the opponents (Tempe group) to Sky Harbor and their perpetual expansion? As for the comment regarding "people stupid enough to move next to an airport and then complain about the noise"----I have lived in NW Mesa for over 50 years, the airport was very small then. Does that mean that Sky Harbor is entitled to expand in perpetuity without any consideration for the new negative impacts they are then having on the community? You asked for questions and comments by e mail yesterday without any mention of this site. Now today you only take questions and comments from THIS link for the show? Overall, a very poor job of "reporting", but an excellent job of public relations flack for the City of Phoenix.

I'd like to take a moment to addres Mack's concern. He asks an excellent question about whether Sky Harbor is entitled to expand without concern of increasing negative impacts for communities in its flight path. While we raised the issue of noise pollution with the proposed expansion of service at Scottsdale's airport, we didn't specifically ask it about Sky Harbor. I wished he would have raised this issue during the show--I would have made sure to fit it in. Mack, thanks for taking the time to comment. We need to know how well we're doing --even if you think it's 'poor.'

I think that this edition of Here and Now on KJZZ epitomizes the corrupting influence of corporate sponsorship in public media. Now, we’ve progressed from a 10-second announcement conveying a corporate sponsor’s message—billed by NPR as helping “your company effectively communicate its brand message to an audience of hard-to-reach influentials and business decision-makers while generating community goodwill”--to KJZZ opening the air-waves for a full hour for Sky Harbor lobbyists.

This wasn’t any kind of balanced exploration of aviation's economic impact on the valley. There’s so much that’s wrong-headed about Phoenix’s relentless expansion of an inner-city airport that it is hard to fathom how any fair-minded person could countenance such unbridled propaganda.

Sky Harbor creates an industrial dead-zone in the middle of town, limiting land-use in one of the areas of the Phoenix metropolitan area with the greatest economic potential.

The Sky Harbor airport is a veritable toxic waste site in its environmental impact, and represents perhaps the most inefficient use of fossil fuels in mass transit.

It’s easy to report an ASU study touting the economic benefits of an airport, but what a responsible public radio news organization should be doing is the hard work of quantifying the economic damage that this airport is doing, and it’s unethical, single-minded pursuit of profits—that would be in the public interest.

One last comment about this inane plug from PHX public relations about “sound assistance”: Sky Harbor offers very little assistance to long-time residents because it uses federal guidelines which set the threshold of noise-exposure to very high limits to qualify for assistance. When I moved into my Tempe neighborhood (one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in the valley) in 1972, PHX hardly existed. Today, I’m subjected to relentless noise from PHX traffic; yet still do not qualify for any kind of assistance. Even the opening of a third runway at PHX, which brought departure traffic a quarter mile closer to my front door, and arrival traffic to within 500 feet of my front door, was characterized by PHX has having “no significant impact” on noise levels at my house. Take this claim for what it is: public relations smoke and mirrors.

Paul, in response to your reply to my earlier comments---As much as I like to listen to NPR each day, it is not possible for everyone with an 8 to 5 job to take time out from work to call in to the show. That is why I took the time to send my e mail comments/questions in the day before and again just before the show when I discovered the "airport questions" link on the web site. Still, none of my questions were addressed. Such as, Why isn't NW Mesa (which is directly under the Sky Harbor flight paths) even addressed in the EIS that was drafted for the new major expansion? And, why won't the City of Phoenix release the Sound reports from the Mesa sound station?
As to the Scottsdale Airport---I think it would have been instructive for listeners to know that the proposal for Commercial Passenger Airlines was turned down (finally) because of the overwhelming negative response by the Scottsdale community.
And again, the Phoenix PR machine has pooh poohed the idea of Williams Gateway Airport as a reliever airport (like Long Beach, John Wayne, etc for LAX) and dismisses it as "a fine place for cargo traffic". This, despite the fact that they just signed a multi million dollar contract with Mesa under the guise of bringing passenger airline traffic there one day. Or so the Mesa officials think. We need to put a stop to the perpetual expansion at Sky Harbor and encourage a true "Regional Transportation Plan" by dispersing some of the traffic to Williams Gateway. Now, not in 20 years.