The City of Longmont's airport issue.

Here is just a brief little redux for you on the airport issue, a little overview, with some resources. It's not too much, but it's focused on things that can be done. To give you some hope.

The City of Longmont's airport issue. 

Data to see what’s happening:

• Traffic hot spots map: https://airbornehotspots.org/v2/conus.html?airport=KLMO
• SuperiorSkies.org tool to see traffic and lead impacts on the front range: https://superiorskies.org/ 
• Superior Air Tracker has a live map, heat map, historical data, and KLMO specific data https://superiorairtracker.com/operations/live 
• Circlejerks.live shows the traffic in our area. https://circlejerks.live/?window=today 

So what would actually work? Here are a handful of things, and each has a real-world precedent:

An enforceable agreement, not promises. Santa Monica fought its airport for decades and lost the same battles we're seeing here. What finally worked was a binding consent decree. 

Contracts and consent decrees can do what lawsuits and ordinances can't, because the airport is agreeing rather than being regulated. 

Jefferson County has acknowledged in court that it has the power to reduce the noise -- which means Longmont can too. 

So let's negotiate a binding agreement. It should include 

• a firm unleaded fuel transition date, 
• enforceable limits on repetitive touch-and-go training written into flight school leases, 
• a change to the calm wind runway configuration, 
• and a funded mitigation program. 

These are landlord powers the airport already has and has simply chosen not to use.

• Adherence to the VNAP disappeared from the lease template in 2016 (ish). Can that be put back into the lease template as mandatory? Should all leases since be re-issued, or amendments issued by the city?

Shrink the problem at its source. Roughly 80+% of LMO operations are touch-and-go training loops. 

That traffic is here because it's cheap and convenient for flight schools, not because it has to be. 

Lease terms can require more simulator training, incentivize quiet modern aircraft, and move repetitive pattern work to less populated satellite airports such as Colorado Air and Space Port that are not surrounded by dense residential area, schools, and parks. 

Other regions have done all three.

The bottom line:

The airport doesn't need to close, and flight training doesn't have to end. But peaceful coexistence, one that existed for decades prior, requires commitments our communities can enforce in court, not promises we can only complain about. Every piece of this solution is already working somewhere in America. What's been missing is the will to sit down and make real, binding commitments.

More below! 

What the City of Longmont can do. 

Get financially sustainable!

The FAA can't force a city to lose money. The city needs to be financially viable.

The airport is like a black hole: 
You can put money into it and you do have to put money into it, but none ever comes back out across the event horizon. And every time you take money and let the black hole grow, you're stuck with 20 more years of the black hole.

Stop taking money as soon as possible and use commercial solutions
 …to get you out of the problem while raising your costs to the aviation community to a reasonable level to cover the cost of aviation.

• set rents & rates to match market rates 
• establish landing fees
• stop taking FAA grants
• keep taking state grants

Landlord powers

Council can approve leases and has landlord powers. 

It's worth it for council to learn what that entails in much more detail so that council knows what it can do (like vote on leases - or not!) and what City Staff can do.

Noise abatement is the city's responsibility 

What can be done? Here are just a few examples:

• Establish time based landings. Van Nuys Airport is just one (of many!) examples. 
• put limits on touch and go operations in certain the hours/days/holidays, and limit no more than 4 take offs and landings in a 4 hour period, like Monterrey’s Airport.
• Create a fund to subsidize conversion costs to use unleaded (~$150 or less per piston engine plane)
• Create a fund to subsidize mufflers and installation on all based aircraft. The same could be done for quieter propellers. 
  • establish a muffler incentive program for all of the based aircraft, especially the non-stage piston engines that fly low all over this city. These pilots who lease their planes to flight schools/flight schools could outfit their planes with city-subsidized mufflers for or quieter propellers, at no cost to the plane owners. 
• Get a noise monitoring app -- like Superior Air Tracker -- that shows airport data in real time, and allows community members to download an app that makes filing a noise complaint easy. 
• Get software like Superior Air Tracker, or use Airport Monitoring Systems system (which the airport currently has) to set up a GeoFence and automate tracking VNAP violations.