Editor, Times-Union: After reading your “View” of the airport expansion I believe you left out one very important point that nobody is talking about.
Pilots are a smart bunch, they study every day the art of flying and new discoveries to make flying safer. One man has spent several personal dollars and hours trying to wake people up and get them involved and to speak their minds. Tony Miller is a very smart man and he is trying to tell us Warsaw airport is what it is and no matter who is footing the bill it could be a big mistake. The point is that our prevailing winds in this area come mostly out of the southwest. Planes take off into the wind.
The city of Warsaw is allowing many things to be constructed on the most-used end of the runway. If we expand and bring in more and bigger planes we increase the possibility of one of those having to bail on climb out and nowhere to land.
The takeoff phase of flight is the most critical it is when things could happen to bring down the plane like a rock. Jets fly because of thrust they are less like a bird than smaller planes that will glide much easier. When jets loose their forward thrust due to a bird strike, failure of an engine or ice build-up on the wings, they are coming down now.
I started flying in 1981 in Addison, Texas, a small town outside of Dallas with a very busy TCA (Terminal Control Area). Addison, like Warsaw, has a lot of what I call corp jets flying in and out. One of the first things you learn is there are many types of airports and they have different usages. Warsaw is and will always be a small airport that can take in a limited number of small corporate jets. By increasing the length of the runway we are asking bigger jets to come here with a congested area at the west end and no place to bail without a catastrophe at one of our large stores a gas station or senior living community.
The question is not will a plane have to ditch on takeoff from Warsaw, but when and where will it land? So for the man that dreams of a regional airline coming here I hope you’re praying that gravity fails when their engines do.
There is always a bigger picture in this world and until you see it don't make a final decision.
Lower the wires, curve the road and sit back and hope that we never find out what happens when a plane over shoots a runway or looses its engines on take-off heading westbound.
