Threatens Little-Used Field With Loss Of Funding, Certification

It's a quiet little airport with long stretches of straight, level pavement. Perfect for planes -- and drag racers. But the FAA says California's Inyokern Airport is for planes only and if the drag racing continues, the airport may lose both its funding and its certification.

Dragsters have used Inyokern's Taxiway A six or seven weekends every year for the past 51 years. But the FAA now says the airport should be for aviators only.

"Runways and taxiways were built to serve aviation," said FAA Compliance Specialist Tony Garcia, who wrote a cease and desist order on drag racing at Inyokern.

That upsets members of the Dust Devils Car Club, which uses the airport for its meets.

"Our families have a stake in the community, and along comes this L.A. guy with no offer to sit down and issues his shutdown orders," said Dennis Garrett, the 70-year-old Dust Devils' president. "This isn't some international airport, you know."

Indeed, Inyokern, about 115 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is hardly the center of the aviation universe. That's what Garrett, his fellow racers and not a few aviators who regularly frequent Inyokern like about the place.

Garrett and the Dust Devils are now appealing the order, saying they pay $1,000 a day to race there. He's worried that illegal street racing will take off without the airport as a drag strip.

FMI: www.inyokernairport.com