Skydive Laconia?

[TheNoonans]

Hi Winnicandle,

Thank you for your support. We are very excited to finally reach a conclusion in this process. With any luck, we will find out next week at the August 2009 LAA meeting.

Mary and I will both be attending the meeting, so as always, if anyone wants to come out and meet us and ask us questions, we will be available both before and after the meeting.

While I am online, I thought I would share with the forum the first line of an article that we found that was published in the Union Leader back in September 2006:

"An $8 million project to improve safety at Laconia Airport was cleared for takeoff yesterday."

$8,000,000?

To "improve safety at Laconia Airport"?

Three years ago? Hmm......

That money came from the NHDOT Division of Aeronautics. It's federal funding dollars administered by the state in a pilot program. The FAA classifies New Hampshire is a "block grant state", which allows the state to determine where federal funding is allocated.

With all that said, it begs the question, if an airport is given $8,000,000 to improve safety and then attempts to deny a legal aeronautical activity due to "safety concerns", stating the airport cannot safely accomidate the activity, did the allocated money serve it's purpose?

To be fair, I would guess that making the airport accessible to skydiving operations, glider operations, float plane operations, powered paraglider operations and tow plane operations was probably not on the agenda of the board when it began it's allocations of the $8,000,000 to improve airport safety. It begs the question though, "should it have been?" There is verbiage within the FAA Advisory Circulars (150/5190-6 and/or 150/5190-7) that would suggest that it probably should have been. Don't quote me, but I believe the line reads something like "it is the responsibility of the airport sponsor to make the airport available for use for all aeronautical activities."

Blue skies to all and to all a good flight,

Tom