Elusive landing aid critical to airport strategic plan
What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Cache County officials have wrestled with this classic conundrum for more than a decade.
Confused? Don’t be.
The poser has metaphorical relevance to the Instrument Landing System at the Logan-Cache Airport — or more precisely, the lack of one.
An ILS, as it is called in aviation parlance, is quite like a slide you might spot at a children’s park. Airplanes fly at altitude just as children sit atop a slide. The precision approach aid guides pilots down to the runway, just as the slide guides the children to their landing site. In a nutshell, an ILS would make bad weather operations at the airport considerably safer.
That was the point County Executive Lynn Lemon, Utah State University President Kermit L. Hall and a small delegation from Cache Valley stressed in a presentation to U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, late last month.
For more than 15 years, county lawmakers and university administrators have lobbied Congress and the Federal Aviation Administration for an ILS, but to no avail.
Now, the FAA’s dilly-dallying is hurting future business plans.
“We have been trying to get commuter services to come to the valley, but they say they can’t because we don’t have an ILS. At the same time, the FAA says without commuter services, an ILS is not feasible,” Lemon explained.
Hence, the chicken-and-egg problem.
The system is expected to cost about $2 million, though no price tag has been fixed.
The quest for the landing aid began in 1986.
The following year, the county was promised a Microwave Landing System, or MLS, because an ILS would be too costly to install and maintain.
An MLS is an advanced precision approach aid that provides better guidance in conditions of fog or low cloud.
But in 1989, the FAA indicated it was no longer installing MLSs.
“They said they would give us a Global Positioning System, which wouldn’t need any ground equipment, only satellites,” Lemon said.
That wasn’t to be. After the Gulf War, security concerns from the military forced the FAA to discontinue GPS installations, sending county officials back to square one.
“It was frustrating,” Lemon recalled. “We had been through all this, and now we were back to the ILS.”
Upset and very determined, officials and airport operators attempted to come up with money for the system on their own.
“Harris Air Inc. even offered to pay half the cost if the FAA paid the other half,” Lemon said.
Still, no progress was made.
“Then we were notified that Sen. Bennett had named us as one of two test sites for the new Transponder Landing System,” Lemon continued.
That was in 1996. The news was greeted with silent cheers.
“We sat back,” Lemon said.
However, not all airport operators were happy about the TLS decision.
USU Chief Flight Instructor Jack Hunter told the FAA the TLS was more suited to commuter airline operations, not training flights.
“We told them that TLS wouldn’t work,” Hunter explained. “We’re the largest user of the airport by far, and we have to go to Ogden to shoot instrument approaches because of the fog. At $107 per flying hour, plus the cost of shooting approaches, it adds up.”
Soon, TLS was history, and officials went back to the drawing board. Only this time, they had their sights set on a larger strategic plan.
The first part of the two-phase effort yielded a business plan to attract commuter and cargo services to the airport.
“We raised $40,000 from community sources to complete phase I,” Lemon said.
The county is now facing the second phase of its strategic plan. This involves implementing and marketing the business plan developed in phase I.
“We plan to raise another $75,000, including private sector contributions,” Lemon said. “For this purpose, the ILS is critical.”
Critical, yes, but it may be awhile before Washington is able to respond.
“They [the county delegation] have yet to submit a formal written request,” said Bennett’s press secretary Mary Jane Collipriest. “Sen. Bennett has committed to do what he can, but we’re at the beginning of a long process.”
The county has until the end of February to submit a written request.
That appeal will then have to worm its way through the Senate appropriations process — already encumbered with 11 bills (now consolidated into one omnibus bill) from last year.
Meanwhile, the FAA is conducting yet another feasibility study.
“We are reviewing and working the request to determine feasibility and if FAA criteria can be met to accommodate the same,” said FAA Northwest Mountain Region spokesperson Mike Fergus.
This time, however, Lemon and other officials aren’t taking things easily.
“We’re going to keep pushing the FAA regional office,” Lemon said. “Our hope is to get it [the ILS] in next year’s budget.”
–leon@cc.usu.edu