"Vermont airport fears change in safety standard"

Saturday, November 4, 2000

Airport fears change in safety standard
By BRENT CURTIS Herald Staff
Rutland (VT) Herald


Commuter airline service at the Rutland State Airport could be threatened by
a proposed change in federal aviation regulations, according to officials.

Airport manager Thomas Trudeau said the Federal Aviation Administration
issued a proposal in June to increase safety standards at all airports
offering passenger flights. These changes would subject smaller airports to
some of the same rules applied to large air carriers.

The state airport in North Clarendon, the state's only commuter airport
other than Burlington International, would be required to have a fire and
rescue team on-site whenever flights take off or land - which would cost an
estimated $510,000 a year.

The airport can't afford it, Trudeau said this week - nor can Colgan Air,
the commuter airline that operates there.

"They're asking small airports to operate like large ones," he said. "We
don't have the resources to provide such a service, yet they want a
one-size-fits-all regulation."

The change would end commuter air service in Rutland, Trudeau wrote in a
letter to local development officials and state transportation officials.

"An increase in fees of such magnitude would no doubt cause the air carrier
to abandon service, or any other user to go elsewhere with their business,"
he wrote.

Friday was the deadline for responses to the proposed change to be filed.
State Transportation Secretary Brian Searles wrote to the FAA his concerns
about the rule's impact on Rutland State Airport, and urged more affordable
safety measures.

The rule requiring an on-site response team currently applies to airports
landing aircraft with 30 or more passenger seats. Under the FAA proposal,
that would be reduced to nine seats or more. Colgan's planes are 19-seaters,
so the Rutland airport has been exempt until now.

While the airport owns a fire truck, Trudeau said, it has been paying the
Rutland City Fire Department a yearly fee to respond to emergencies.

Several air crashes at smaller airports in the mid 1990s prompted the FAA to
expand its safety rules.

The proposed changes would affect the Burlington International Airport as
well. But Burlington is already required to provide on-site fire protection,
which it receives from the Air National Guard stationed at the airfield.

"This isn't going to be much of an impact for the big airports, but it's
going to put the little guys out of business," Trudeau said.

Lebanon Municipal Airport in New Hampshire, which serves several Vermont
communities in the Upper Valley area, faces the same dilemma as Rutland,
according to airport manager Tim Edwards.

The on-site protection would cost $150,000 more each year, he said. The cost
would be passed on to U.S. Airways, which offers seven flights a day to New
York and Philadelphia.

The airline was unlikely to pay the price, Edwards said. "If we raise the
prices to pay for the safety requirements, we risk driving ourselves out of
the market. It would take away any incentive airlines would have to do
business with us."

The Rutland airport handles four to five Colgan flights a day. But Trudeau
said the proposed regulation and federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration rules would require four-member firefighting crews to be
ready at the airport 12 to 13 hours a day, seven days a week.

That would force the airport to increase its landing fees by 2,000 percent,
he said.

Right now Colgan pays a base $8 fee for each plane that lands at the
airport - a total of about $14,000 a year. To pay for the additional fire
protection, Trudeau said, that fee would increase to more than $150 a
flight - more than $250,000 a year.

Ironically, both Edwards and Trudeau said, the FAA subsidizes flights from
their respective air carriers. Colgan Air received $679,000 over a two-year
period to include Rutland State Airport as a stop Trudeau said.

"On the one hand, they're subsidizing flights to smaller markets like ours,
but then they contradict themselves a bit by pursuing a policy like this,"
Edwards said.

No federal assistance was included in the proposed rule change, he added.

Rutland development officials said the loss of a local commuter service
would be a step backward for business growth in the region.

David O'Brien, executive director of Rutland Economic Development Corp.,
said many businesses in the region depended on convenient air travel.
Acquisition of new businesses in the area relies on it, he said.

"It would absolutely be a serious loss, a blow to us to lose our commuter
air service," he said Friday.

In a letter to Searles, O'Brien said prospective industries wouldn't even
consider the region unless a commuter airport was within an hour's drive.

If Rutland and Lebanon lost their commuter airlines, he said, the nearest
service would be in Burlington or Albany, N.Y.

The Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce had similar fears.

Thomas Donahue, executive vice president, said an independent consultant had
estimated the region would lose $5.2 million loss in business annually
without a local commuter airport.

"It would be hard for most businesses to justify keeping their headquarters
here if there wasn't reasonable air access nearby," Donahue said.

O'Brien and Donahue said they also sent letters to Vermont's congressional
delegation.

The proposed rule is still under review, and the FAA has been gathering
responses from various states with airports that would be affected.

The National Association of State Aviation Officials in Washington D.C.,
reported Friday that the FAA has received critical reviews from aviation
officials in seven states, including Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Before the proposed rules can be implemented, the FAA must wait 120 days to
allow Congress a chance to review the rules.

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