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Warsaw Municipal Airport Manager Nick King didn’t hold back his frustration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at Tuesday’s Board of Aviation Commissioners meeting.
That frustration first came up during discussion on runway 9-27 and CR 100E, and then again about a recent meeting with the FAA and the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT).
Mary Kerstein, project engineer with CHA Consulting, the airport’s engineering firm, reminded the board back in January they discussed a runway 9-27 fact sheet and she shared some of that with the board Tuesday.
“Again, for those who may not remember some of our discussions from January, Nick had a meeting with some state representatives and they had been wanting just a quick exhibit and bulletpoints for them to share on the need for some of our long-term and short-term projects,” she said.
Both a long-term and a short-term fact sheet were developed. The short-term includes the tunneling of CR 100E underneath the future runway extension, with rough-cost estimates. The long-term would be the full extension of that runway/taxiway.
King said, “The FAA has changed their rules through that memo that they sent out and what is and what is not allowed in the runway safety area. ... A lot of public perception is we need to move 100 East for a runway extension. The new rules within the FAA, and how they determine what can and can not be inside a runway safety area is now determined that that road must be moved, even if we don’t add a foot of pavement to the asphalt. It has to be moved. They now classify it as a public safety issue.”
There have been several slide-offs at other airports in the last couple years where aircraft have impacted crossing traffic, King said. There have also been some issues at other airports in winter operating months.
“This is at other airports in the U.S., but they do collectively look at all of the airports and they use statistics to figure out what is the likelihood of this happening in airports, and when they made these rule changes, anybody who is not to standard must figure out a path forward to maintain that new standard,” he explained.
The short-term fact sheet is the one King said they are really looking at “and would like to try and educate the public as best as we can. When the public hears runway expansion, that’s not the goal of this project. The project is to keep the public safe from the slide-offs and then the other big issue is jet blast and black ice and winter operations, as well.”
When an aircraft takes off - jets specifically - on runway 27 to the west, they’re about 180-200 feet from the road. When those jets go up to full power, King said hot air coming off can heat the road for an instant, and, if it’s snowing, it can create some severe black ice in that area. Another concern is white-outs during snowstorms.
“Those are the safety concerns that the FAA has for the general public, as well as landing to the east if we have an aircraft coming in ... heaven forbid if there’s ice or snow on the runway, they slide off the end. Right now, they can impact somebody traveling on 100,” King said.
Another “big” issue he said is, “we’re really taking into consideration and we’re working with our local legislators on - Propel 30 is coming down the pipeline. We’ve got project (U.S.) 30 coming and if 30 goes to limited access, there’s really only three routes that connect north Warsaw and south Warsaw - 15, Silveus Crossing and 100 East. And 100 has both hospitals, they have a couple elementary schools and it is a huge corridor for our local traffic, and we need to make sure that - not just the city, not just the airport, but our entire region ... there’s a lot of communities that use 100 to get into town for the services that Warsaw provides. And we, as a community, need to have a unified front because it is a major thoroughfare for our area.”
The FAA does have some common sense, he said, and they understand it’s not an overnight project and not something that the airport can get funding for immediately.
“So as long as we have identified what the problem is, and we are working towards a plan to mitigate the runway safety area, just having that plan is enough for now, but it also needs to be a realistic plan and something that we will be able to complete. And there’s not been a deadline put on that yet, but I also don’t like to gamble and don’t want to get right up next to the end of a deadline and have the FAA give an ultimatum: You’re either losing 2,000 feet of runway or you’re closing the road, and that’s not a conversation we want to put the airport and the community in,” King said.
He continued that they are proactively working with all parties to try to come together with the best possible plan to move forward. In his and his team’s opinion, the tunnel checks all the boxes.
Commission President Dan Robinson said it isn’t feasible to close CR 100E. Kerstein said that’s why they wanted to create the fact sheets for the legislators to have at their fingertips.
Robinson asked if there’s been any recent traffic counts taken on CR 100E. King answered that he has a request in to the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) because they recently completed a traffic count.
Later in the meeting, King brought up the meeting Monday between him and CHA and INDOT and the FAA on the airport’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).
“It was not a productive meeting and it was not a good meeting. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We are getting significant pushback from the FAA on some of our projects. I feel like it’s Groundhogs Day and we are having the same conversation every year, and both myself and the entire CHA team are getting very frustrated with our program manager, Victor Iniguez, at the Chicago ADO (Airports and District Office),” King stated.
He said the conversation Monday “was kind of indicative of how that office is being run right now. There’s no organization. There’s zero communication. We have documents and plans and things submitted that go six to 10, 12, 14 months without any communication. We send follow-up. We send emails. We call, and we get no communication back.”
INDOT, on the other hand, has been great, King said.
“We are hitting the same wall over and over and over again with the FAA,” King said. “INDOT’s director of aviation, Marcus Dial, and I spoke this afternoon. He would like me to let him try to intervene for the airport and have some conversations with some people higher up in the food chain than I have direct access to at the FAA to see what is going on because he doesn’t understand it and his boss, Marty Blake, the multimodal director, doesn’t understand it either.”
Dial and Blake were under the impression the Warsaw Airport had a very good CIP and were moving in the right direction, King said, “and, we had a huge curveball thrown at us yesterday where the FAA wants us to start moving projects around and it’s not in a logical order.”
King said his frustration is it’s “at a breaking point at this point. I’m leaning on CHA and our partners at INDOT to give us guidance because we are literally at this point going in circles.”
He listed possible options as more in-person meetings with the FAA, letting INDOT speak to FAA on the airport’s behalf or getting 2nd District U.S. Rep. Rudy Yakym involved. The Board of Aviation Commissioners told King to let INDOT intervene first before he pulls his “trump card” and asks Yakym to act on their behalf.
Kerstein said she was at a national aviation conference Monday and the FAA administrator spoke there and said the FAA this time last year had 25% more employees than they do now. She said there’s a lot of institutional knowledge that is no longer at the FAA, but she also agreed that King should hold on to his trump card and go with INDOT’s help.
