Improves accessibility and safety | ||||||
By LARRY DEVINE A new safety feature introduced last month at Carroll’s Arthur N. Neu airport has enhanced the facility as a premier general-aviation airport in west-central Iowa. The new technology also eliminates the need to make high-bank, dogleg-pattern final approach course. Instead, there will be one approach fix, improving simplicity and safety. Veteran Carroll Airport Commission members Norm Hutcheson, chairman, and Greg Siemann say the Carroll airport, located three miles east of town, appeared to be the first general-aviation airport in western Iowa to have use of the technology. “The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has rapidly embraced that technology as an answer to saving money in the new national air-space-transportation system,” Siemann says of GPS. “Satellite system has changed aerial navigation, just as it did for farming, trains, trucking, ships at sea, everything we do,” he adds. “It’s been a learning curve for the equipment manufacturers, as well as the FAA to develop new procedures to take advantages of all the improvements in technology.” Hutcheson notes the Carroll airport is one of the busiest general-aviation airports — airports without airline service — in western Iowa, with 600 to 700 landings a month, according to federal and state transportation counts. Business traffic to Carroll and communities throughout the region account for a large percentage of those landings. Siemann says of the technology upgrade, “It makes our airport significantly more usable in inclement weather.” The system is satellite-based, using equipment already in place. The FAA did flyovers to check approaches to the airport before activation. Siemann attests to the accuracy of the new system, giving it a tryout shortly after it was activated. And Hutcheson says of the grants, “That doesn’t come out of general tax funds. That comes out of passenger-loading fees, fuel fees. It all comes from the flying public. If you don’t fly, you don’t pay. We’ve been very fortunate in Carroll in Carroll to get a good portion (from the National Aviation Trust Fund).” The Carroll airport receives a lot of turbine and jet traffic from businesspeople on their way to Carroll and area communities such as Ralston, Manning and Denison. |
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