New Commission Believes Shift In Priority Due

The Forrest City Municipal Airport's newly appointed commission has indicated the airport may be headed in a new direction after an informational meeting Tuesday night in Forrest City, AR.

A 393-foot extension of the runway, which the former board had been seeking, doesn't strike the new board as being the most important priority, according to the Forrest City Times-Herald.

The meeting focused instead on what improvements were actually appropriate or even feasible. The formation of a regional airport is very probable.

"I think we were in more or less an exploratory or fact finding mode," said commission chair Pat Flanagin. "The options are all the way from going to a $2.4 million program that was recommended in 2002, down to maybe doing as little as getting another wind sock. But there are a lot of things in between, such as a parallel taxiway."

Commission member Jeff Schwartz, a pilot, said if safety was a priority, a parallel taxiway might take precedence over lengthening the runway.

Flanagin agreed. 

"I concluded... that if we are to do anything at all major, the taxiway would be the first priority, because having someone trying to land when someone else is having to turn around and taxi on the runway is a recipe for disaster," he said.

He added he wasn't sure the city could match an estimated $60,000 to go with a $200,000 and $300,000 grant from the state Department of Aeronautics for the taxiway the board is hoping for.

"I doubt the powers that be will want to make that size of an investment in something that's not going to be used" should a regional airport be built, Flanagin said.

But, things have changed somewhat since the last master plan was developed.

"It was envisioned that our airport would be needed for corporate use, other than predominantly agriculture planes," Flanagin said. "However, reality has shown us that the opposite is true. The use of the airport by ag planes is probably higher than it was five years ago."

Schwartz believes agriculture and other types of aircraft to be a "bad mix" in the same airport and, while small corporate jets are increasingly popular, there doesn't seem to be a need for this airport to expand in that direction.

"It's easy for chamber of commerce types to say we've got to have an airport where jets will be whizzing in and out," he said. "But you've got to have something for the jets to whiz in and out for."

Flanagin notes that when the original master plan was developed, it took into account an expected increase in corporate jets activity. Most of the companies flying jets listed in the report have long since left.

"What we are in is kind of a holding pattern," Flanagin said. "All the arguments made for why we should grow here will be met by the regional airport. What is it that we need to do to satisfy the needs of our community while this other thing (regional airport) is getting fixed? And then the city will have to look at its resources and say, 'do we want to keep this one and that one?'"

"The basic use for this airport is going to be predominantly crop dusters. They're going to be the ones to use it. What's the use of the city putting money into it?" Schwartz said.

Dan Clinton, an airport consulting engineer, presented a history of the airport's planning, including a master plan financed by the FAA that would have lengthened the existing runway from about 3,400 feet to 5,000 feet.

When the plan was presented at a public meeting in August of 2001, it met with disaster. Clinton recalls the incident as "that meeting with all the people with the pitchforks."
All of the 150 people in attendance at that meeting opposed any airport expansion.

"That was five and a half years ago," said Clinton. "And in fact, some of those folks had buttons that said, 'We want a regional airport.'"

FCY was forced to give up its federal funding to the regional airport project when the city joined nearby Wynne to form a regional airport commission a short time later.

The former airport commission still attempted to gain a smaller runway extension with an $80,000 state grant, but ended up returning the money when bids came at more than twice that amount, even with $20,000 matched by the city. Those commission members have since been replaced by the city council.

FMI: www.forrestcitychamber.com/econ_transportation.html