There was a good article in this morning’s West Edition of the Star Tribune about Flying Cloud Airport called “Not Everyone On Board For Flying Cloud Expansion”. The article was written by Ben Steverman. Ben writes the bulk of the material in the Star Trib’s West Edition. He does a pretty good job. I won’t call him “fair and balanced” because that terminology doesn’t mean now what it used to. But I’d say that he does his research and covers the various perspectives of his subjects.
The main point of the story is that some Eden Prairie citizens oppose the expansion of the Flying Cloud Airport and some support it.
The City, which has had a history of actively opposing the expansion of the airport, settled its issues with the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), which owns and operates the airport, in December of 2002. The City and the MAC agreed on the scope and magnitude of the future expansion of the airport. Specifically, the MAC agreed not to do some things, like allowing the start of full-scale public passenger services, and the City agreed to withdraw its active opposition of the expansion.
The MAC looks at Flying Cloud as a key facility in its Reliever Airport system. The Reliever Airports do just what you think they’re supposed to do: they are supposed to relieve the international airport – MSP – from small general aviation air traffic. The idea is to keep the little guys off the big field, I’m told. By doing that the big guys have more flexible use over the big field and the little guys have more flexible use of the little field.
I don’t know enough about aviation to know if this system works, or not. What I do know is that Northwest Airlines has significant corporate concerns about the expansion of Flying Cloud Airport. If the reliever system worked the way it is supposed to, I would think that NWA would want Flying Cloud expanded. But they don’t.
At the moment, the ball is in the MAC’s court. They are engaged in a formal complaint process with NWA about the Flying Cloud expansion. The City has agreed not to resist the expansion, although we will monitor it to make sure we are getting what MAC said they were planning to do. The airline industry is not flush right now, so all this discussion of expansion may just be for naught.
