Voice Your Opposition

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) and the FAA are about the short-sighted business of rewriting the regulations by which air tours over U.S. national parks are conducted. Extant drafts of the agencies’ Air Tour Management Plans (ATMPs) call for measures the likes of eliminating air tours in their entirety in some U.S. parks and, in others, cutting such undertakings by as much as 86-percent.

Currently, the NPS and FAA are working to codify the Bandelier National Monument ATMP, which seeks to eliminate ALL air tour flights over the New Mexico plateau upon which Ancestral Puebloans made their homes between 1150 and 1600 A.D.

In addition to dramatically curtailing park access for innumerable elderly, disabled, and very young visitors, the proposed ATMP stands to undermine the air tour industry to a degree commensurate with the forced closures of many smaller air tour operators.

For purpose of safeguarding accessibility to America’s national parks and defending aerial tour operators from governmental overreach, the Helicopter Association International (HAI) has devised an efficient and effective means by which individuals may speak out against the U.S. National Park Service’s and the FAA’s assorted Air Tour Management Plans.

Pilots, aviation stakeholders, nature lovers, and all Americans are asked to take action on behalf of the nation’s aerial tour operators by submitting comments to the National Park Service—comments establishing public support for the continued operation of aerial tour operations.  

A template message has been provided. However, personalized messages have greater impact on and are more likely to elicit responses from policymakers. Ergo, the template may be edited to more accurately reflect respondents’ personal opposition to big government’s attempts to undermine the universal accessibility fundamental to the ethos in service of which America’s national parks were founded.

Please take action on behalf of the air tour industry. Please support the universal accessibility to America’s national parks afforded by aerial tours.

Be advised, however, that the deadline for submitting comments is 11 August 2023.

FMI: https://p2a.co/MjhRdOn