Saturday, January 31, 2015

Norwalk-Huron County Airport (5A1) begins search for new leader

Huron County Development Council director says she is not interested in becoming next airport manager.


It's time to plan for the future.

That theme was made evident at Wednesday's special meeting of the Huron County Airport Authority where board members terminated the management contract with Douglas Aviation.

Harry Brady, airport board president, talked Thursday about a new direction for the facility and the plan for management.

Brady was asked if Carol Knapp, director of the Huron County Development Council, would become the next fixed-base operator at the airport.

"I've heard that rumor, too, and I don't think there's much substance tied to it," he said. "I haven't asked her and we really haven't put out there the criteria we're looking for in the position."

Knapp was also asked Thursday if she was interested in the job.

"I have no interest in serving as the next fixed-base operator at the Huron County Airport," she said.

"My passion is economic development and it is my desire to continue doing the job I love. As the county's economic development director, my plate is full and there is not sufficient time in my day to take on additional responsibilities of this nature," Knapp added.

Is the airport looking for a full-time manager?

"That really depends on what we expect them to do," Brady said. "The position needs to be flexible.

"Maybe some weeks it would be 15 to 20 hours, but during the weeks where there are main events at the race track, they might work five days, eight hours per day, because planes will be in and out and people will be in and out," he said.

Brady said the position also depends on how much the county commissioners are willing to contribute monetarily.

Brady said he'll ask the commissioners, himself, for funding.

"It'll happen," he said.

In the meantime, the airport board members will be filling in until a manager is hired.

"John Evans will be out there on weekends monitoring the phones for a couple hours," Brady said. "I'll make sure the runway is plowed.

"We'll try to get somebody in there as soon as possible," he added. "Maybe we'll just hire a maintenance person who is responsible for the upkeep of the airport."

Original article can be found at: http://www.norwalkreflector.com

Bay Area tech types take to skies

Aviation student Thomas Munka, of San Francisco, does a visual check while making his approach for landing during his flying lesson with Chris Hansen of Sterling Flight School at Buchanan Field Airport in Concord on Jan. 24. Munka is one of a growing number of tech workers in the Bay Area who have developed an interest in learning how to fly and perhaps buying their own aircraft. (Dan Honda -- Bay Area News Group)



SAN JOSE >> When it comes to riding Silicon Valley’s soaring tech boom, the sky’s not the limit — it’s simply the next rung in the ladder.

In another byproduct of the digital Gilded Age that has turned the Bay Area into one big startup-tropolis, the tech community is undergoing a remarkable altitudinal adjustment. Whether it’s Intel using its fleet of corporate jets to essentially run a private regional airline, or the retired Apple big shot getting his pilot’s license so he can zip back from his San Luis Obispo home to have lunch in Cupertino, or the San Francisco 20-something learning to fly because it’s a “beautiful hobby” that lets him “defy physics,” the region’s tech warriors are spreading their wings.

“I’m seeing more and more young people who’ve made money from tech startups and are now buying planes,” said Walt Gyger, owner of the Trade Winds Aviation flight school at Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose. “Back in 2008, people were holding off on spending on a dream like flying, but that money is coming back now.”

Big tech companies are using private jets to shuttle their CEOs between meetings in Santa Barbara, Seattle and Denver, sometimes in a single day, and the IPO-endowed are using their stock-option windfalls to buy fractional shares in NetJets planes. Vickie Buonocore, publisher of San Mateo-based In Flight USA, has noticed an increased interest in private aircraft, especially among companies “looking for ways to quickly get their executives around the country and the world. Private planes let you go where you want and when you want, without security hassles or waiting in long lines.”

And with the worsening congestion on Bay Area roads, flight student Tom Munka said it’s only a matter of time before he and his fellow pilots will be “aero-commuting” around the region. Munka, a 23-year-old San Franciscan working for a telecom company and learning to fly at Sterling Flight Training Center in Concord, said he hopes to buy a plane after he gets his license and use it initially for leisure but eventually for business.

“If it becomes cost-effective to travel around by plane, then I might do that,” said Munka, as he pursues his “beautiful hobby.”

TRAFFIC CONGESTION


He said “with the traffic becoming so congested, it can take one hour to drive across San Jose. In L.A., we’re starting to see more and more people aero-commuting, with the airport parking lots full by 7 a.m., and I can see this as a reality for more and more people in the Bay Area, too.”

The flexibility and speed of private aviation have been shown to help boost the bottom line, an important point given the competitive pressure cooker Silicon Valley is these days. One industry survey showed that companies using private aviation enjoyed an 11 percent higher market-cap growth than those that didn’t use it and that they also generated more income due to productivity.

Access to smaller airports is a big part of that efficiency. According to the General Aviation Manufacturing Association, business aviation serves 10 times the number of U.S. airports (more than 5,000) than are served by commercial airlines, which total about 500. So it’s no surprise, as Buonocore points out, that “there are more and more corporate people who want to rent aircraft. And you have aircraft operators standing by, waiting for their phone calls, just like a taxi service.”

While business aviation may not necessarily be experiencing a dramatic boom, some industry data indicate a strong and steady increase in activity year over year ever since the market hit bottom in 2008. U.S. sales of piston engine airplanes and business jets jumped nearly 10 percent from 2013 to 2014, while overall airplane shipments rose nearly 6 percent, according to GAMA, with more growth expected in 2015.

FULL HANGARS

Jim Lafferty of Lafferty Aircraft Sales, based at Mineta San Jose International Airport, said he sees the impact of those sales figures each day. With planes coming and going nonstop, and work proceeding at the airport on a huge new facility co-owned by Google, the scene is what you’d expect to see in the middle of an economic renaissance.

“There are hangars full of airplanes everywhere you look, some based in San Jose, others in places like Monterey and Stockton, that are constantly flying in to pick up or drop off businesspeople,” said Lafferty. “There’s a lot going on — it’s crazy out here.”

Large-scale operations such as Intel’s — whose fleet of private aircraft shuttles employees daily between corporate outposts in California, Oregon and Arizona — are the exception, and GAMA studies show that smaller companies operate the majority of business aircraft, with 59 percent of firms operating business aircraft having fewer than 500 employees. But just below the Intels of the aviation world rests a long string of options, descending in price and offering a custom-fit flight experience for each substratum of the tech world’s peripatetic.

There are private planes for hire, such as the ones from JetSuite, that have become go-to travel choices for the Valley’s rich and powerful. With state-of-the-art avionics, a board of directors that includes Zappos wunderkind Tony Hsieh, and onboard Wi-Fi and XM Radio, these aircraft provide a just-in-time experience that’s seemingly cut from the Silicon Valley cloth. It’s not cheap: one recent “Daily Deal” offered a private four-seater jet, one-way from San Jose to Oakland, for $536.43.

A less expensive option is an “all-you-can-fly” airline like Surf Air, a startup that offers a monthly membership for $1,750 (with a $1,000 sign-up fee) that lets members hop on daily scheduled flights up and down the state, pretty much to their heart’s content. “A lot of our members could afford something like NetJets but would rather invest that money in something else,” said Justin Hart, vice president of member acquisition for Santa Monica-based Surf.

“The new commodity is time. You have your typical executive in the Bay Area, who’s making $400,000 a year but chooses not to buy his own plane. But he needs to get to a meeting in L.A. and he knows his company values his time, so he can’t afford to wait in line for 90 minutes at LAX, dreading what awaits him at SFO.”

SAVING MONEY

Marcus Lovingood, a 29-year-old movie distributor and owner of a digital ad agency in L.A., uses Surf to fly up to the San Carlos Airport for business three or four times a week. He figures he’s saved his eight-employee company, Futureleap Media, $30,000 since he first joined Surf Air a year and a half ago. “We were spending $2,000 to $3,000 a month for travel in California, with me taking Southwest flights three times a week and using up a lot of my valuable time,” said Lovingood. “Surf Air just made so much sense.”

Other entrepreneurs are learning to fly, either for fun or for business once their startups get off the ground.

“We’ve been seeing an uptick this past year in the number of people learning to fly, and a lot of them are from the tech community,” said Bert Postma, a pilot and member of the Stanford Flying Club. “This area is much better off than other parts of the country, so a lot of people here can afford to get into general aviation.”

Postma said students have included “young people from Google and Stanford,” as well as a recently retired senior executive at Apple, and techies who fly to work from as far away as Oregon. And many of them,” he said, “end up buying their own planes.”

Bill Sutherland, director of marketing operations for Apple, said friends got him interested in flying in 2009, and when an in-law told him about how he used his plane for his own business, “that flipped my switch.

“Someone said it might make sense to buy my own plane for my training, so I got a used Cessna 172 for like $118,000,” said Sutherland, who knows at least six fellow Apple employees who fly. He has since upgraded a couple of times, using his plane to visit family across the country.

Sutherland said he kept one of his old planes and rents it out, but he sold his Cessna 206 “to another Apple guy, so it’s staying in the Apple family.”

Story and photos:  http://www.santacruzsentinel.com

Pull out of tailspin on airline dilemma: Kearney Regional Airport (KEAR), Nebraska

Kearney Hub Opinion

If commuter air service in Kearney could be in a worse situation, it is hard to imagine how. Reliability is iffy. Passenger traffic is in the toilet. The choice of companies that could replace the current carrier, Great Lakes, is dwindling as excessive federal requirements for pilot experience have decimated the commuter airline industry.

To understand how desperate the situation has become, consider the bet that Kearney leaders placed on an Ohio-based airline, Aerodynamics Inc. Municipal leaders here picked ADI to provide daily commuter flights to Denver and promised up to $500,000 to help with promotional efforts.

ADI has been skating on thin ice, having declared bankruptcy in 2013, and now is in danger of losing its federal permit for commuter and charter flights. Last week the federal Department of Transportation tentatively canceled ADI’s commuter and charter certificates, declaring the airline to be financially unfit because its president was guilty of defrauding $500,000 from another company.

ADI has replaced the offending executive, but it’s unknown whether the airline possesses the capital that FAA officials would like to see as an assurance that ADI can make good on its obligations to the communities it intends to serve. It’s entirely possible, after the required review period, that the DOT will make its temporary declaration against ADI permanent.

If ADI is dealt the death blow, Kearney could be adrift without a paddle — but wait.

What about Great Lakes?
Its balance sheet is strong, and the FAA has ordered Great Lakes to temporarily continue its service out of Kearney.

Why not put some energy into helping Great Lakes? How? Start by cutting out the negative talk. Each time a city leader says we have a lousy airline, potential passengers drive down the road.

Put money on the table. Great Lakes can’t lure passengers until it resolves its reliability issues. Rather than tossing $500,000 at a bad bet, consider how that money might help put pilots in Great Lakes’ cockpits. Spiffs for pilots, scholarships for pilot trainees at UNK — get outside the box and think creatively.

Ask questions. How do other airports succeed? 
Grand Island is boarding 60,000 passengers annually and will open a new $14 million terminal in early 2016. Why do other communities have airport authorities, and how are they boosting air service with the taxes and other revenues the authorities generate?

Finally, encourage businesses and industries to support Kearney’s airline. If executives and high level managers aren’t using the airline, we’ll surely lose it.

Original article can be found at: http://www.kearneyhub.com

Edgar County Board having insurance problems at KPRG - Paris, Illinois

PARIS, IL. (ECWd) –  The Edgar County Airport’s recent response to a Freedom of Information Act request proved to be consistent with what we have been suspecting for years – that the perceived issue of “insurance” was never really an issue, and is still not an issue – it was simply a smoke screen for several “people” to attempt to flex their muscles and try to get what they were after from the Airport, and ultimately from the taxpayers.

Think back over the past few years and remember the constant badgering about insurance from people leasing hangars, etc, at the airport. Even going so far as the former airport manager claiming that even though proof of insurance was shown, it could be canceled at any time, therefore there was no insurance. Chris Patrick (disgraced former county board chairman), Jimmy Wells (disgraced former airport manager), Adonna Bennett (disgraced former airport advisory board chairman), and Mike Heltsey (disgraced former Dept. of Corrections employee, former illegally appointed “covert investigator” for the Crippes regime, and current county board member) were the main culprits in the scheme – all on the taxpayer dime.

Now back to present time:

The existing hangar lease agreement at the airport requires that proof of insurance be given to the airport manager for all “flyable airplanes” stored inside or outside of the leased hangar. The proof of insurance must name the county as additionally insured (on flyable airplanes), and there must be a minimum of $1 mil of general liability insurance. This term as used, is meant to denote airplanes that are currently flyable, and also airplanes that can be brought to flyable status with some type of maintenance performed on them. Remember that term “flyable airplane” as that plays an important part to this puzzle.

A FOIA request asking for the certificates of insurance on all airplanes for all hangar leases was sent to the airport, and this is their response:

Certificates of insurance for T-hangar leases…were provided for:

a)      1) John Milligan*1981 Cessna 152 – 1,000,000.00 – 7/2014 to 7/2015 Does not show the County as additionally insured

b)      2) Jacob Barrett – 1968 Cessna 1721 – 1,000,000.00  – 6/2014 to 6/2015 Does not show the County as additionally insured.

c)       3) Dale Barkely  2007 Sky Ranger II LSA  – 1,000,000.00  –  8/2014 to 8/2015 Shows the County as additionally insured.

d)      4) Jacob Jobst    1968 Cessna 150 H   –  1,000,000.00  –  8/2014 to 8/2015 Does not show the County as additionally insured.

e)      5) Frank Bishop 2006 Christavia MK 1 –  0000000000 – 4/2014 to 4/2015 Does not show the County as additionally insured.

f)       6) John Roehm  1946 Cessna 140  –  1,000,000.00 – 5/2014 to 5/2015 Does not show the County as additionally insured.

g)      7) Dennis Naylor 1978 Cessna 152   – 1,000,000.00 – 8/2014 to 8/2015 Does not show the County as additionally insured.

Far-reaching Consequences

Let us just assume for once that the Edgar County Airport and the Edgar County Board are actually telling us the truth on this issue – that there are only 7 (SEVEN) flyable airplanes at the Edgar County Airport. Don’t get me, wrong, I don’t believe for a minute that the board gave us the correct number, but we can always hold out hope…

This would further prove the fraudulent grant application for the fuel farm/apron extension, where they all claimed 36 airplanes at the airport – is it any wonder the FAA and IDOT put a screeching halt to the million dollar grant?

Now, copies of any applications for future grants have been requested, so we can see what numbers are listed on those applications – care to take a wild guess?

Ok, back to reality – the County did not respond with all of the information that is required by the lease agreements. We must find out why certain people are allowed to violate their lease and demand they comply. I suggest that all leaseholders in violation of the lease be given 30 days to vacate the T-hangar and the airport, after all, they should treat everyone the same.

Remaining Questions:

a)      Why, in foia hangar lease requests, did not all 15 hangars have leases on them and match the insurance documents when all 15 hangars are in use as indicated by the comparison between leases and insurance documents?

b)      Does Chris Patrick have a flyable airplane at the airport and if so, where is his insurance document?

c)       Does “Tom and Jerry “ have a flyable airplane at the airport and if so, were is his insurance document?

d)      RSB does not have flyable aircraft in storage at the Edgar County Airport…

e)      Does Jake Payne have a flyable airplane at the airport and if so where is his insurance document?

f)       Does Tom Newlin have a flyable airplane at the airport and if so where is his insurance document?

g)      Does Steve Blane have a flyable airplane at the airport and if so where is his insurance document?

h)      Does Tom Newlin have a flyable airplane at the airport and if so where is his insurance document?

i)        Does Dale Barkely lease a hangar and if so where is a copy of the lease agreement?

j)        Does John Milligan lease a hangar and if so where is a copy of the lease agreement?

k)      Does Jacob Jobst lease a hangar and if so where is a copy of the lease agreement?

l)        Why doesn’t Frank Bishop (insurance doc) match name on lease (Kevin Bishop) and include information requested in FOIA showing $1,000,000.00 in insurance coverage?

m)    Why are Indiana residents (i, e, Newlins) allowed to lease (3) hangars…from the airport when that airport is a subsidized by Illinois/Edgar County taxpayers to the tune of $100,000-$200,000.00 annually – AND – claims have been made that there is a waiting list for hangar space, but that list could not be produced.

n)      Records in hand indicate only 7 airplanes at the Edgar County Airport in flyable condition

————————

The bottom line in all of this, is to show that all of the excuses and lies put forth in the past from airport and county board members were in fact lies, and there has never been, and will never be, an attempt at holding others accountable to the terms of the lease they signed.

Original article can be found at: http://edgarcountywatchdogs.com