Opinion - Letter
When people talk of wanting to limit the military use of Pueblo Memorial Airport for helicopter flight training, they lose sight of one important fact. The airport was originally a military airfield and if it wants to use it for training or any wartime use, it could take the airport back from the city of Pueblo. Then Pueblo would be without an airport.
If we lost our airport by the military taking control of it through eminent domain, the city of Pueblo no longer would have a source of income. We may even lose the private aircraft usage rights at the airport — only military air traffic could use the facility — and more of our revenue would go down the drain.
Would the city of Pueblo enjoy that possibility?
Not me.
Also, people living near an airport should expect high levels of noise, especially when stormy weather forces pilots to keep using maximum power for safety during take-offs and climbing to a safe altitude.
When developers start building neighborhoods near an airport runway, the buyers of the properties should be aware that several things may occur to cause noise levels to increase:
- The airport may be expanded by making the runways longer for the safety of larger aircraft using the airport.
- Adverse weather conditions may require pilots to remain at high power during takeoffs for a longer time, thus high noise levels underneath the flight paths.
- An airplane attempting to land but needing to abort the landing will increase power to 100 percent during the abort/fly-out to try the landing again. If this noise is unacceptable to homeowners under the flight-path, what about a crash landing into your home?
I have lived in Pueblo for all but five years of my 70-year lifetime, and I have seen a time when the Sunset Park area (Prairie Avenue to Pueblo Boulevard and Northern Avenue to St. Clare Avenue) was the airport in Pueblo.
There was a gap in the wall around the Colorado State Fair along Prairie Avenue so that airplanes taking off would not crash into the wall if they were unable to attain the speed to take off earlier on the runway.
I can remember the old DC-3 aircraft that would use the airport (Sunset Park) here in Pueblo. Imagine the noise of that two-piston engine aircraft flying overhead at an altitude of only about 50 to 100 feet on takeoff.
Some weather conditions could force those pilots to stay at full takeoff power while flying their takeoff patterns until they had crossed the city boundary on an eastbound takeoff from the airport at least until they were over the Bessemer neighborhood.
William F. Ryan
Pueblo
Source: http://www.chieftain.com
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