Tag: ATADS-OPSNET

KAPA & KBJC: Updated Monthly Operations Data

Post author By ENDaviationinequity
Post date 2023-10-30

A new month is approaching, and residents along the Front Range are continuing to be heavily impacted by excessive flight training.

In the last decade, there has been a big push for consolidation of flight schools. Private Equity is investing in these businesses, and making extra profits by concentrating activities to just a few airports. So, if you happen to live near an airport that draws its students from across the nation and even from Asia and Europe, FAA and industry players feel this is just your poor luck. The schools (and elite investors) are happy, and FAA does a great job enabling this concentrated abuse, while staying mum and not advocating for any balance or mitigation or justice.

This year, is proving to be horribly impactful for people near two towered airports south and west of Denver: Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), and Centennial Airport (KAPA). This Post provides the latest compilations of monthly operations data for each airport, from January 2017 through September 2023. October’s data is not available until late November, due to FAA delays in sharing data they are fed by all towers every night; also delayed if your local airport authority refuses to get the data from the local tower, and share it ahead of important meetings. So, when monthly airport meetings come up, those concerned citizens who attend are handicapped for lack of current and timely data.

Wouldn’t it be nice if FAA advocated on behalf of the resident population, by urging (or even requiring, as an obligation to receive federal grant monies?) airport authorities to post timely data online ASAP, ahead of events where citizens can engage? Wouldn’t it be nice….

For KAPA, the September 2023 operations changes (versus September 2022) are:

Itinerant: down 2%
Local: up 41%
TOTAL OPS: up 17%

For KBJC, the September 2023 operations changes (versus September 2022) are:

Itinerant: up 15%
Local: up 9%
TOTAL OPS: up 11%

Click on this link to download the KAPA ops data, or this link for the KBJC ops data.

20231030.. ATADS monthly 2017-2023 cn42KAPA
20231030.. ATADS monthly 2017-2023 cn42KBJC
Scroll over the PDF above to activate the PDF viewer controls at the bottom; page-scroll with the arrows in the bottom left corner, or use +/- to zoom in/out.

Tags ATADS-OPSNET, KAPA, KBJC

Airports

FAA’s Forecast in 2000 Missed by Miles, and Now We Need More ATCs?

Post author By ENDaviationinequity
Post date 2023-09-20

Ten days from now, FAA’s current authorization will end. Reauthorization has been ongoing at Congress all of this year. One party rules the House, and they came up with a Reauthorization bill that reads like a Christmas List for general aviation; the other party rules the Senate, and is still not finished with their version. It looks like we are heading for a showdown, and likely an extension or two. If past repeats, we may also see controllers staying at home, but getting paid for that added time-off when all the dust eventually settles.

Watching how poorly the parties function in Congress, and also how poorly our mainstream media fails us by not diving into the details (instead, just repeating past stories and reprinting press releases from FAA, NATCA, A4A, AOPA, etc.), it is easy to start to hunt for more info on the internet. The internet is filled with articles, FAA reports, GAO Testimonies, Congressional hearing transcripts, and much, much more. It is educational, but it is also depressing, seeing how themes and strategies repeat, and then they repeat again.

FAA loves to go to Congress and ask for more money, and commonly they do so by pulling big numbers out of (somewhere) and proclaiming the skies will fall if we do not spend a lot more: hire more controllers, build more runways, fork out billions for ‘capacity enhancement’ technologies like NextGen. But it has become much more sophisticated. All of the key players are constantly ‘co-lobbying’ (although FAA fondly calls it ‘collaborating’) with one another, fusing their advocacies to guide us toward even more waste. Their nests get feathered, despite the fact that FAA is doing a lot less while also using a LOT more automation. It is a racket, and this Post provides some insight into the racketeering co-lobbyists.

Click on this link to download the 4-pg PDF, for viewing offline, and feel free to share it onward.

Use the embedded PDF below to read the PDF online; dwell on the bottom left corner of the PDF to use up-down arrows (for page scrolling) or to zoom in/out.

20230920.. An FAA Forecast, Actual Ops Trends, and do We Need More ATCs (4p)