By Warren Cornwall
Herald Writer
While jets have resumed roaring over Seattle, the skies above Harvey Field Airport in Snohomish were quiet Monday.
Nearly a week after the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, and days after large-scale commercial flights returned, few planes are leaving the smaller airfields that dot Snohomish County and the nation.
That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration continues to ground most flights by small planes that rely on few instruments and improvised flight-plans.
The limits on such flights, known as visual flight rule or VFR flights, has halted most traffic at area airports.
For some airport operators and flight-school owners, it has meant an economic hardship.
In Snohomish, as many as 40 workers have been laid off from jobs ranging from airplane refueler to flight instructor, said Harvey Field owner Kandace Harvey.
"For the time being there’s nothing to do," she said.
Further north, officials at airports in Arlington and Camano Island also reported little activity. Steven Knopp, co-owner of the Camano operation and an airplane maintenance company, said he could run out of airplanes to repair if the ban continues for several weeks.
Even Paine Field, the county’s largest airport, was less busy than normal. The VFR flights account for about 80 percent of the flights, said airport director David Waggoner. Businesses such as flight schools have largely been kept out of the air, he said.
Despite the headaches, local airport officials say they are cooperating, and have no complaints about the bans.
"Our emphasis is in cooperating with what’s going on," Harvey said. "We know and understand these things need to be taken care of now."
The ban grounds planes that take off while providing little information about where they are flying, said Waggoner. Such flights simply need to get cleared for takeoff.
Flights that follow the more stringent rules must file a flight plan detailing where they are going and what route they will take, and have transponders that enable air traffic controllers to identify a plane and get basic information about its location.
Waggoner said the FAA is trying to tighten control over the skies, and that VFR flights are difficult to track.
"It is a very tough problem," he said.
One small airplane violated the ban Tuesday by flying over north King County shortly after the attacks, said FAA regional spokesman Mike Fergus. That plane was intercepted and escorted to a landing spot by at least one Air Force F-16 jet, he said.
Fergus said he did not know when the ban might be lifted.
You can call Herald Writer Warren Cornwall at 425-339-3463 or send e-mail to cornwall@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
