Florida Airport Forced To Ration Fuel Because Of Shortage
It's the busiest time of the year
for airports in Southwest Florida. Thousands of snowbirds go there
to escape the wintery weather every year. So you can imagine the
angst in Naples, when pilots discovered the airport would start
rationing fuel.
Naples Municipal Airport last week issued it's own NOTAM,
telling pilots it had run out of Jet-A. Now, the airport storage
tanks weren't completely dry -- authorities always keep a reserve
for emergency response aircraft. But as far as general aviation and
commercial pilots were concerned, the pumps were closed.
Doug Van Dyken, who works at Coporate Flight, Inc., said he
never expected the airport to stop selling fuel. "I was totally
shocked when I got there and couldn't get gas," he said in an
interview with the Naples Daily News. "One airplane (pilot) begged
and pleaded that he had to leave. They came over and sold them 75
gallons to get to where he was going on the other side of the
state."
The fuel situation at Naples Municipal is already a sore subject
for pilots, who said the city shouldn't be in the aircraft fueling
business at all. "They (the businesses) could charge whatever they
want to. Let them compete as capitalists in a head-to-head
approach."
Less than 40 miles away, at Southwest Florida International
Airport, FBO executives couldn't understand the Naples fuel
shortage.
"We had no problem getting fuel (on
Monday)," Vincent Wolanin, chairman of PrivateSky Aviation, told
the Daily News. "We're stocked (with fuel) and ready to go. We can
take all airplanes Naples wants to send here, and we'll fuel them
up."
What's going on in Naples? Gail Cureton, who speaks for the
Naples Airport Authority, said the field was shorted on a fuel
delivery. She said for two days last week, the fuel company sent
only two trucks a day -- not the five trucks normally sent. "We
basically were not given the amount of fuel that we ordered," she
told the Daily News.
The shortage at Naples Municipal is even more noticable when you
consider the case of Jet 1 Center. As ANN has reported, that
company is locked in a legal fight with the airport authority after
a local judge ordered Jet 1 to stop selling fuel in December 2003.
General Manager Jeff Ellston told the Daily News, when his company
fueled aircraft, there was always enough fuel to go around.