Editor:
Dennis O’Meara’s letter to the editor, (“There’s no way out of Aspen’s airport upgrade,” Aspen Daily News, Feb. 20) asked for an example of an Aspen-like airport that “forgoes FAA grant money and uses fixed-base operations revenue to fund capital improvements instead.”
Wrong question. Of course the 1,562 publicly owned, mostly local-government-run U.S. airports that own and control their own FBOs (as of 2019) will take FAA grants if they can get them, but there are circumstances where foregoing FAA grants is the right thing to do.
For example, in 1993, the FAA withheld grants for Aspen’s airport over a curfew dispute between the county and private jet owners-operators. The people of Pitkin County won, which resulted in a fair and vital curfew, and the FAA grants resumed in 1995. We did the right thing then. Let’s do the right thing again.
Today the core question is whether FBO revenues will suffice to cover the needs of our airport without FAA grants. Aspen Fly Right will soon report, with accompanying data, that the answer is yes; this is just about arithmetic.
Based on FBO revenue data revealed in September, the revenues would be ample to modernize the terminal and repair the airfield even without the FAA discretionary grants. Arithmetic is not an opinion. The math works.
The end of Mr. O’Meara’s letter also misses the point. He wrote, “… for the sole purpose of building a non-compliant airport.” We already have an airport. We’re discussing expanding the one we have. We believe we should make Aspen’s airport better, not bigger. It’s already noncompliant, and we have the FAA’s permission to retain its noncompliant airfield design and wingspan limit — all safety-certified and approved by the FAA — for as long as our county commissioners choose to keep it. The FAA specifically confirmed this to the commissioners last April.
Because Pitkin County has been asking for bigger planes for more than a decade, the FAA is trying to coerce the county into building a new half-billion-dollar airfield to fit them, in return for staying eligible for discretionary grants. But if the county stopped insisting on bigger planes, lost the FAA grants and kept the FBO revenues, we wouldn’t need the grants. That is why math matters.
In 1995, Pitkin County voters soundly rejected airfield expansion to accommodate 737s. As Yogi Berra said, "It's déjà vu all over again." Did they think we’d forget?
The voters of Pitkin County, not just the county commissioners, should decide if we want bigger planes to land here.
Jackie Merrill
Aspen