Smaller runway to be decommissioned at Northeast Alabama Regional Airport
The Northeast Alabama Regional Airport is about to have one less runway and a bunch more opportunities, according to city officials.
The City Council on Tuesday signed off on the Gadsden Airport Authority's decision earlier this year to decommission Runway 18-36 at the airport. Council approval is required since the city is the authority's partner on the facility.
It's the shorter of two runways at the airport — 4,806 feet by 100 feet compared to the larger runway 6-24 at 6,802 feet by 150 feet — and is a crosswind runway, designed to facilitate landings if winds are blowing perpendicular to the main runway.
However, city officials during the pre-council work session noted that the Federal Aviation Administration only justifies a main runway at a regional airport like Gadsden's. That negates any possibility of federal assistance such as grant money for the secondary runway, which according to Brett Johnson, Mayor Craig Ford's chief of staff, needs at least $5.5 million in maintenance work.
Johnson said Goodwyn Mills Cawood conducted a runway concepts study at the airport last year, gauging the aviation utility around the crosswind runway.
It showed that landing on the main runway “is doable” 99% of the time and that having the secondary runway locks up about 200 acres of land that can't be developed for aviation purposes because of the safety area that must surround all sides of a runway.
Johnson said pilots who attended the GAA meeting where the vote was taken to decommission the runway supported the move. He noted that the FAA discourages crosswind runways these days because of the potential of collisions.
“We haven't taken this decision lightly,” Ford said. “A lot of people in the administration, the council and me are passionate about the airport and gives us potential for growth. We've changed and revitalized the airport to a point where we're ready to start securing funds and growing it.”
That's another motivation for the move. Johnson said the airport is currently operating under an outdated airport layout plan, the document that lays out guidelines for development at the facility. That plan was updated several years ago, when another engineering firm was directing efforts at the airport.
Johnson said the update was only a tweak, but that the FAA would be unlikely to permit another one so soon if things remain as is, despite the city's new leadership and their new ideas and stronger commitment to the airport, which included hiring aviation veteran Anthony Tarver as manager.
Decommissioning the smaller runway would be considered “a significant change” to its layout, however, which would open the door for the FAA and the Alabama Department of Transportation to support a fresh airport layout plan. Once that happens, Johnson said, “Every project becomes fundable with FAA grants.”
The council recently approved an agreement with a developer who plans to construct multiple T-hangars at the airport, and Ford said he's told Tarver he either wants to see a new or renovated terminal there.
“My intention is to grow our airport,” he said, “and make it one of the biggest in Northeast Alabama.”
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Gadsden City Council approves decommissioning smaller airport runway
