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In last week’s column, we reported that Butler Airport would be closed to all traffic after March 24th, but a shift in the contractor’s schedule has delayed the start of reconstruction until March 31st. So, we’ve had an extra six days to prepare or evacuate. Plans are still to be closed for 25 days.
The strong March winds hit flyers hard this week, grounding all flights while rattling hangar doors and stiffening wind socks. There seemed to be one good day between storm passages, so one had to take advantage of the lull before battening down the hatches for another blow. ‘Wasn’t too bad,” was the comment heard on the semi-windy days.
Traffic came and went with the usual types showing up. We saw some Piper Archer trainers come in, one making night practice landings, and a lone Cessna 182 stopped by. A thirsty Beech Bonanza A36 dropped in Saturday, seeking fuel after a non-stop flight down from Minneapolis. He was disappointed to find not only a dry tank at Butler, but not even a pump (we’re still waiting for installation of a new one). The NOTAM warning was expired, since we had no airport manager to keep track. He was so low on fuel he didn’t dare go on down to Nevada, so we took up a collection of avgas from the local hangars to help him out of his dilemma.
We also had a call from a Kansas-side plane owner, hoping to buy 55 gallons of 100LL to refill his barrel, since Pleasanton airport no longer keeps avgas. Couldn’t help him out. Not much activity was seen this week around the local hangars. Burns Custom Spraying had its AirTractor agplane out, and there was some flight instruction activity at Sky4 LLC’s Cessna 150 nest.
Poor old Southwest Airlines can’t catch a break, trying to keep up its on-time arrival record. After the last-minute go-around a couple of weeks back, to avoid a corporate jet crossing the runway at Midway airport in Chicago, another Southwest crew attempted to take off from a parallel taxiway instead of the runway at Orlando last Thursday. An alert tower controller canceled the clearance, before they could complete the faux pas. It wasn’t too many years ago that a Southwest 737 landed at the little School of the Ozarks airport instead of Branson’s airline field, on a dark night.
In other national news, we see that the Montana state legislature has passed a bill prohibiting the use of ADS-B surveillance information from being used in the state for anything other than enhancing air traffic control and safety. This to counter FAA legal enforcement of penalties for pilot mistakes by only reconstructing the flight from ADS-B data, and collecting landing fees from plane owners by contractors recording movements using ADS-B. Ah, the pitfalls of unintended consequences from rushing to embrace technology.
In the last column, we asked if aircraft compasses pointed to the magnetic North Pole. Not really; what the compass does is align itself with the Earth’s lines of magnetic flux, which themselves point toward the poles. Of course, we don’t care, we just steer by the numbers on the compass’s card. For next time, what airline advertised its low “peanut fares” by passing out free packages of goobers to its passengers? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
