CAA: GA News, "FAA loosens curbs on light aircraft"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Friday, Sept. 21, 2001

FAA loosens curbs on light aircraft
Air limits keep many Bay Area airports virtually shut; flights schools
closed
BY FRANK SWEENEY
The San Jose (CA) Mercury News


Federal authorities loosened some flying restrictions on light aircraft
Thursday, but half of the Bay Area's general aviation airports remain
virtually shut down.

The Federal Aviation Administration's new rules still prohibit flight
training, further squeezing flight schools and instructors who have been out
of business for 11 days.

``We don't get it,'' said Jim McLaughlin, the flight school manager for
Trade Winds Aviation at Reid-Hillview Airport in East San Jose. ``We're
still grounded, other than we can rent planes for point-to-point flights.
We're crossing our fingers that flight instruction can resume tomorrow, or
Monday at the latest.''

Most light planes had been grounded since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on
the East Coast, although late last week the FAA permitted resumption of
point-to-point flights under instrument rules directed by air traffic
controllers.

But 92 percent of all light plane operations are conducted under visual
flight rules, which permit pilots to choose their own courses and altitudes,
within limits.

The rules announced by the FAA on Thursday allow visual flights to resume,
but not in the more restrictive airspace around the nation's 30 largest
airports, such as San Francisco. And that, in turn, is keeping a number of
other airports essentially shut down.

``The relief they gave is having very little effect at the county
airports,'' said Jerry Bennett, director of Santa Clara County's airport
system.

In the Bay Area, Reid-Hillview, South County in San Martin, Hollister,
Tracy, Salinas, Monterey and Watsonville airports are open again.

But Palo Alto, San Carlos, Hayward, Half Moon Bay, Oakland and San Jose
International airports are closed to traffic under visual flight rules
because they're within San Francisco Airport's special airspace.

The FAA rule modified previous airspace regulations to require instrument
flights out 30 miles from San Francisco Airport at all altitudes. This
blanketed smaller airports that previously had been below the San Francisco
airspace.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a 375,000-member aviation
lobbying and safety organization with headquarters in Frederick, Md.,
estimates there are 41,800 general aviation aircraft based at 282 smaller
airports inside airspace of similar large airports.

Those planes normally would account for about 21 million operations a year.
And there are many transient aircraft at those fields whose owners are
unable to take off to fly home because they don't have instrument pilot
ratings.

On Thursday afternoon, it was quiet at Reid-Hillview Airport.

``I've heard probably three planes in the last hour,'' said Marici Reid, who
runs Amelia Reid Aviation with her husband, Robin. ``There goes another one
now.''

``If people want to come in and rent airplanes, they can do that,'' she
said.

Although licensed pilots can practice takeoffs and landings, students are
still grounded.

Bennett said Reid-Hillview Airport has more than 700 takeoffs and landings
on a normal summer day.

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