AircraftOwner Online

This is an important issue!

We all appreciate the FAA’s work in funding improvements to General Aviation airports. Their funneling of financial support makes our airports safer and more useful for all types of General Aviation operations. This is good. However, a dark side of this funding has recently come to light.

That is FAA Order 5190.6B, also known as “Compliance Guidance Letter 2009-1 – Through-the-Fence and On-Airport Residential Access to Federally Obligated Airports.”  This new policy forbids local airport authorities from entering into new “through-the-fence” agreements with surrounding land owners and requires that existing agreements not be renewed. Previously worded guidance used the word “discourage” while the new directive uses the word “prohibit.”

This FAA order, 5190.6B, is the guiding light used by FAA employees, state aviation officials, airport managers, and the pilots and tenants of airports around these United States. When the FAA announced an onerous series of new prohibitions in the Manual on September 30, 2009, they did so without any public input or comments. Regrettably, extreme airport access prohibitions appear to have been capriciously added by FAA staffers – with little or no input from anyone but the rule makers in their respective mirrors.

Prohibiting through-the-fence access at FAA funded airports flies in the face of a long history of Americans building their homes – and hangars – adjacent to public use airports. Aircraft access to these airports was never in question. Now it apparently is.

The logic the FAA is using is akin to prohibiting automobile access to federally funded highways for people who own homes with garages next to a highway. Does that make any sense? Of course not, and neither does prohibiting someone from “driving” their plane to an adjacent airport. If the FAA gets away with this new rule, I wonder what they will do when someone buys a new Terrafugia and drives it across the street to the airport and takes off? For that matter, what will they do when I drive my Taylor Aerocar to the airport and take off?

Prior to the September 30, 2009, amendment, the FAA policy on through-the-fence access read as follows: “As a general principle, FAA will recommend that airport owners refrain from entering into any agreement which grants access to the public landing area by an aircraft normally stored and serviced on adjacent property. Exceptions can be granted on a case-by-case basis where operating restrictions ensure safety and equitable compensation for use of the airport.”  This represents over 50 years of FAA support and approval of thoughtful through-the-fence access. Yet, the new FAA rule states: “there are no acceptable residential through-the-fence agreements.” In fact, it appears that the FAA is ordering any FAA-funded airports to cancel existing agreements that don’t have end dates.

This is clearly a wrong turn by the FAA at a time when General Aviation needs all the help it can get. My guess is that the policy makers who came up with this restrictive idea are not pilots and are not active in General Aviation. It’s a problem that has become epidemic in recent years; there are fewer and fewer aviators at the FAA. Certainly, this ridiculous rule-making shows a complete disconnect with the GA community.

What Can You Do To Help? One of our regular contributors, Dr. Brent Blue, has created a web site that’s a good place to start. It’s www.ThroughTheFence.org (you can also read Dr. Blue’s Opinion page in the December issue of AircraftOwner: http://aircraftowneronline.com/lg_display.cfm/page/20/catalog/57) . You have through March 31, 2010, to submit your comments on future changes to 5190.6B using the following instructions:
1. Go to: www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#home 
2. Type: FAA-2009-0924-0001 into the Keyword or ID search block, which will bring you to the FAA Order 5190.6B docket site
3. To the far right of the first line, click on the “submit a comment” link
4. This comment site will let you attach other documents to your comments.
To read the EAA and AOPA’s responses to the FAA, visit these links:
For the AOPA: www.aircraftownernews.com/AOPA_FAA_TTF_Letter.pdf
For the EAA: www.aircraftownernews.com/EAA_FAA_TTF_Letter.pdf

We you want to read the FAA document; visit this site. It’s the700 page manual which replaced a 60 page manual dated 1989. The particular through-the-fence material is in Chapter 20:  www.faa.gov/airports/resources/publications/orders/compliance_5190_6
 
Take That Coffee Pot and Couch Out of Your Hangar NOW!

We need to stop this sort of baseless regulation gone wild. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you will not be allowed to have a couch or coffee pot in your hangar if it’s on an airport receiving federal funding. In fact, some reading this document suggest that is already the case.

Never Surrender As we go into the New Year, it is becoming clear that 2010 will be no different from recent years. We must continuously defend General Aviation at every turn. This issue is no exception. General Aviation increasingly seems like an island of sanity and we must defend it. So in the words of our great fellow pilot Winston Churchill:

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

By sticking together, and only by sticking together, we can continue to share and enjoy the benefits General Aviaiton brings to America. Fly safe in these coming months.

If you missed Brent Blue's article about airport access in the December issue take a look at it now. This is becoming a very hot topic.