Las Vegas Airport Seeks Federal OK To Ban Experimental A/C

Commissioners in Clark County, Nev., on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to their local director of aviation to lobby for federal legislation that would enable him to ban experimental aircraft from local airports. The effort is in response to the crash of a homebuilt Velocity near North Las Vegas Airport in August. The airplane struck a house, killing the pilot and two people on the ground. Ian Gregor, spokesman for the FAA Western-Pacific Region, released the following statement in reaction to Tuesday’s meeting: “We believe Congress acted wisely in giving the FAA sole authority over civilian airspace throughout the United States. It would cause tremendous disruption – even chaos – to air traffic operations nationwide if every local community were allowed to arbitrarily decide which aircraft could and could not land at local airports.” EAA’s Earl Lawrence, vice president of industry and regulatory affairs, gave the proposal little chance of succeeding.

“You would be allowing an airport manager to determine on his own what could come and go,” he said. “What he is asking is that Congress, the President, and the administration give up the authority. That’s a pretty good stretch.” Nonetheless, Lawrence said his team is prepared to roll out strong opposition if such a proposal should make its way to the Hill.

AVweb.com

I work for the DOA (@ LAS), and live not far from VGT. Sadly much has grown up around VGT since the early 80’s and now with these events happening the Director is taking a lot of heat. Under DOA auspices, we have another sport/experimental airport, Jean, and it’s far enough out from the valley that these types of incidents would not be an issue.

All the Director wants is more say in what can and can’t fly at a suburban airport; mainly uncertified (or temp cert) and experimental aircraft. This would not affect a large # of flights, or seriously restrict many aircraft.

Living around there too, with South Summerlin expanding and soon past Blue Diamond, my guess is that 0L7 is going to get wiped out by the sprawl and complains about ‘move the airport’ when it has been there for YEARS before they moved there. Then enter Ivanpah…

BL.

:slight_smile: it’s interesting that you bring up Ivanpah…my office is adjacent to our planning department and I have not heard any confirmation one way or the other as to the future of Jean with respect to Ivanpah.

My thoughts are that it will need to be relocated, or at least replaced; especially when you factor in our Directors concerns with gaining control of what type(s) of AC can access our GA facilities. If I hear anything I will post back.

Hey guys. I used to work for the DOA. I was at Henderson from 04-05. When I was there we were getting alot of pressure from the neighbors to restrict people who flew into the airport. When NBAA came man was there an uproar. I was flying helicopters as well too and when we went to fly there, the neighbors had us flying crazy patterns since they complained " we were looking down in the pools at them swimming" It’s like living by Disneyland and complaining about the traffic.
Isinlv, which dept are you at? I worked between airside and landside there at LAS from 01-04

I work in construction & engineering since 2006.

Oh ok. I left the DOA in 05 and can’t remember anyone’s name. Faces yes, names no. I miss it though, funnest job I’ve had.