President's Visits No Longer Shut 'Em Down

That big sigh of relief you heard last week? That was the owners of the two flight schools based at Killeen (TX) Municipal Airport (ILE), who were very pleased (to say the least) to find out that a four-nautical mile airspace exemption was approved by the Secret Service. The exemption allowed them to continue flight instruction during Presidential visits to the Bush ranch in nearby Crawford, Texas.

"We’re finally going to get a chance to continue business," said Richard Guy, Manager of Killeen Aero FBO and Flight School. "It’s a lifesaver for us if they’re going to honor it. We were honestly facing going out of business if the TFR had continued to prevent us from operating (during presidential visits Killeen Aero also operates a flight school in nearby Temple, which is located 21 miles from the president’s ranch--well inside the 30-nm TFR. "We now have a chance, if we know the president is coming, to move airplanes from Temple to Killeen and base out of here and still get flight training in," he said.

No More Short Finals

Rick Whitesell, chief flight instructor for Central Texas College (CTC) Aviation Department, was similarly relieved. "Everybody’s ecstatic," he said. "All the flight instructors have been talking about it. We sure appreciate the letter EAA wrote. You got a lot farther than we did."

Before Christmas 2002, CTC was still able to fly, but not safely, Whitesell said. Pilots would have to turn base a lot sooner when landing to the south, but the biggest problem was checkrides. "You really didn’t want to send your students up, having to turn over the hangar and land halfway down the runway," he explained. "It (the TFR) was just a disadvantage to the students that were flying at the time. They had to go to other flight schools just to do practice landings." CTC has about 110 active flying students and about 125 students in the aviation program.

The airport ‘s runway lies outside of the 30-nm restricted airspace, but by only 700 feet. EAA successfully argued that the exemption would not adversely affect security for the president and would enhance safety for pilots. The tentative FAA and Secret Service approval was communicated in a letter from FAA program director for air traffic planning and procedures Michael Cirillo dated February 13.

FMI: www.eaa.org