Naples Daily News
Friday, August 17, 2001

Naples Airport Authority begins second attempt at jet ban
By Larry Hannan, ljhannan@naplesnews.com

NAPLES — Like a character in a bad horror movie, the Stage 2 jet ban at Naples Municipal Airport has risen from the dead and is ready for a sequel that may have even more twists and turns than the original production.

Thursday, Naples Airport Authority began its second attempt to institute a ban on Stage 2 jets, which were made primarily between 1975 and 1983 and are noisier than jets made after that time.

The authority unanimously approved starting a 45-day comment period and a 180-day notification period for a $102,500 scope-of-services report that the Airport Authority completed in June. The two comment and notification periods can occur simultaneously and are expected to begin Sept. 1.

Once the waiting period is done, the Airport Authority should be able to enforce the ban. The earliest this could occur is in March 2002.

Technically, the original ban, which began at the beginning of 2001, is still in place, but the Airport Authority has deferred enforcement of that ban because the Federal Aviation Administration raised objections to the original $350,000 noise study that recommended instituting the ban. The scope-of-services study, which is also being called a supplemental analysis, was designed to address all the issues the FAA objected to in the first study.

Stage 2 jets account for less than 1 percent of the total aircraft at Naples Airport but make up about 40 percent of the noise complaints.

The Airport Authority had been waiting for the FAA to give its approval to the supplemental analysis before moving forward with the comment and notification periods but decided at Thursday's meeting that they had waited long enough.

"(The FAA) has indicated it will get a letter back to us," Airport Authority Executive Director Ted Soliday said. "But how long can we wait? This lets everyone know we have a timetable for when we want to get this done."

The Airport Authority is also moving forward because it wants to let people in the local community know it is actively moving forward with attempts to institute the ban, Soliday said.

The supplemental analysis is expected to be available to the public at Airport Authority offices and local libraries by September. The authority also will invite public comment and encourage people to write in with their thoughts on the study, said Lisa LeBlanc-Hutchings, Airport Authority operations director.

FAA representatives have said they are looking at the supplemental analysis and expect to get back to the authority soon.

Federal officials have criticized the original ban because the noise study that recommended instituting it used a 60-decibel noise level. The FAA uses a 65-decibel level and would have preferred that the authority follow its lead.

The authority is free to use 60 decibels but has to provide evidence and an explanation of why it used the lower level. The authority didn't do that, said Lynne Pickard, manager of the FAA's community and environmental needs division.

The study also didn't include an examination of nonrestrictive ways to reduce airport noise, such as noise barriers, land purchases and voluntary curfews, FAA officials said.

The FAA doesn't have to approve the Stage 2 jet ban but it does have to determine whether the authority followed proper procedures in instituting the ban. The FAA has said the authority didn't follow proper procedures.

FAA officials promised the authority at a meeting earlier this year that the FAA would take an unofficial look at the supplemental analysis once it was completed and let the authority know if the work addressed all of the objections the federal agency had with the original noise study.

Airport Authority board member Ron Pennington said the authority was taking a conservative approach toward moving forward with its plan to institute the ban.

"We could have started enforcement right away," Pennington said. "Instead, we're being conservative and trying to work with everyone."

Naples Airport officials now feel they are dealing from a position of strength because a judge in federal court last week dismissed a lawsuit the National Business Aviation Association and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association filed earlier this year. The suit challenged the Stage 2 jet ban .

Soliday said it is possible that the FAA was waiting for the lawsuit to be completed before they responded to the airport's latest study.

"I honestly think the FAA expected us to lose this lawsuit and then they wouldn't have to be the bad guy in all of this," Soliday said.

People are now realizing that the authority has done a good job in working toward its plan to institute the Stage 2 jet ban and followed all the procedures required under federal law to ban the aircraft, said Airport Authority Chairman Eric West.

"We've really done our homework on this," West added.