Page 29 - Jan 20 TNT

WANTED:
Part time pilot with current 25 Learjet credentials
Milwaukee, WI based 25 Learjet owner seeks experienced
part time pilot with current 25 Learjet credentials. Infrequent
Daniel ManesisTransportation
trips from Milwaukee, WI to Pueblo, CO. Excellent pay.
Please contact Daniel Manesis at 414-327-4448
being this country long ago stopped building new airports. Luckily, we built a lot of them to start compared to other countries, but increasing demand for land use has placed the existence of those remaining under threat. In addition, most of the existing airports were laid out long before any wetland or other such environmental issues were of concern. But now they are, and the regulations applicable to them have real teeth. At our airport, this has made vast areas of otherwise suitable land not useable by law. Even when some of the land is not envi- ronmentally constrained, other rules regarding soil type and drainage can make building on those sites prohibi- tively expensive.
A third reason is the cost of con- struction itself. The time has long passed where cheap, farm-style pole buildings suitable for keeping a C182 out of the weather, were readily per- mitted by local government authori- ties. Now, most new construction must meet building and fire codes that sim- ply did not exist 30 years ago – and that has greatly increased the cost. Also, there are prevailing wage rules as to what the construction workers are to be paid that did not exist in times past. This is particularly true if the construction is on publically owned land (as are most airports), or if the public entity has any business or ownership type involvement with the project. In our area, all these regula- tory requirements are estimated to increase construction costs by at least 50 percent. Now, a case can be made that better-paid workers and buildings designed to a higher standard are all good things, and they are, but they also upsurge the cost.
Another interesting reason for the hangar shortage problem is called the “bump down phenomena” – something that has actually been caused by the success of business aviation. When I was a flight instructor based out of Boeing Field (KBFI) on the southern edge of urban Seattle (now more than four decades ago), there was ample tie-down space for general aviation. And if a given business bought say a Learjet, there was plenty of room for that airplane to be housed at a cost
Rosen Sun Visor Systems
CIES
January 2020 / TWIN & TURBINE • 27