What's Up
by LeRoy Cook
3-31-2025
Suggested Banner: Heads Will Roll
Traffic was light around the Butler Airport last week, even
though flying weather was intermittently favorable, when the gusty winds
abated. Over the past months, since the fuel system was shut down, we’ve seen a
decline in transient traffic. Obviously, not having fuel available makes a
difference.
The Bellanca 7KBA Citabria that had been taking refuge here
for a couple of weeks finally got to depart, just before the airport was closed
last Monday. Repairs were made to the fuel injection throttle body so it could
get back to Lee’s Summit. Other planes coming and going were a Piper Warrior
and a Cessna Skyhawk, and a Piper Arrow also visited. Local movements included
Jeremie Platt’s Grumman Tiger, Roy Conley’s Grumman Tr2 and a few Cessna 150
training sorties.
In national news, a California county has been slapped down
by the FAA for refusing to allow leaded 100-octane fuel to be sold at its two
airports. Since 2022, Santa Clara County has required operators to stock only
94-octane unleaded gas or STC’d G100UL unleaded, which some plane owners can’t
or won’t use. That violates the grant agreements stipulated when the county
took federal trust fund money to maintain its airports, one of which is a ban
on exclusivity of services provided.
The Alaska pilot who got stuck in thin ice on a Kenai
Peninsula lake last week, leaving him and his two passengers stranded
overnight, has been stuck in more ways than just out on a lake. It turns out
that he held only a student pilot’s license, so he can’t legally carry anyone
with him. Rules don’t count for much in Alaska, where flying is as common a
driving a pickup. About all the FAA can do is revoke his student ticket and
perhaps levy a fine.
Also last week, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota got upset
on Friday when she learned that a Minneapolis-bound airliner departing
Washington D.C.’s National airport “narrowly missed” an Air Force T-38 that was
passing by on its way to Arlington Cemetery for a fly-over tribute. Actually,
while surprising, the system worked as it’s supposed to; airliners are required
to carry alerting and resolution gear that warns pilots when a plane gets too
close, and that’s why nobody got hurt this time. But, steps will be taken...
And then there was the red-faced (and probably former)
United Airlines pilot who made his Shanghai-bound Boeing 787 turn around two
hours after departing Los Angeles, because he realized he had forgotten to take
his passport with him. Better to face consequences at LAX than in Communist
China, he figured, but the passengers had to be inconvenienced, arriving six
hours late.
Our weekly challenge from last week wanted to know what
airline advertised its low “peanut fares” by passing out free packs of the nuts
to its passengers. That would have been Southwest, back in the days before
allergy hysteria. For next time, as Butler airport gets a runway lighting
upgrade, in what year was the system being replaced installed? You can send
your answers to [email protected].
