By Ryan D. Wilson
Clay Center Dispatch
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — City and airport officials said while there isn’t a person stationed at the municipal airport right now, the airport is being taken care of and air ambulances can land at the airport.
This issue arose last week after The Dispatch quoted county officials as saying that an air ambulance wasn’t able to land at the Clay Center Airport for an accident on April 2 because the air ambulance was unable get confirmation of the weather by phone.
EagleMed, the air ambulance service, said in an e-mail to city airport engineer Brad Waller that visibility was poor on April 2 from 9:30 to 11 p.m., which was why they requested rerouting to a nearby airport with an Automated Weather Observation Service (AWOS) system.
EagleMed officials said some times they talk to a trained weather observer, but that isn’t required to land.
Other air ambulance systems operate on similar protocol.
Life Flight Eagle, which provides non-emergency transports to Children’s Mercy, said they would check Clay Center’s weather by pulling automated weather information and altimeter settings through the AWOS by radio from neighboring airports (Concordia, Manhattan, Junction City) or from GIS.
Most planes get weather information and altimeter settings for the Clay Center Airport through neighboring AWOS systems, and EagleMed also could have done that to land at the airport when visibility is poor, according to EagleMed officials.
Life Star helicopter usually uses on-board weather info and info from their bases.
“Aviation does not run on people on the ground, everything is done in the air,” acting airport manager Scott Heinen said. “In this day in age, with the way protocol is, the equipment and avionics they have, there need not be anyone at the airport (for air ambulances) with the exception, that when they land and they take on whoever they take on, they have to give a manifest, which can go to the EMTs ... And that is, in case they go missing, they know who was on board.”
Thatcher said the city intends to install an AWOS system.
The airport will apply for a grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation to upgrade so that planes can pull local AWOS info directly from the Clay Center Airport and not have to rely on neighboring airports, Thatcher said. That would cost $70,000 to $90,000.
Clay Center has never applied for this kind of grant, so chances are fairly good it will be funded 100 percent by KDOT, he said. The grant deadline is in September.
Remarking runway to bring back night approaches
Currently the airport has instrument approaches during the day; but at night some of the larger, faster planes may require a night instrument approach, which the airport currently does not provide.
That will be corrected this year when the airport remarks the runway and moves lights to shorten the allowed landing area by 200 feet to 4,000 feet. The altered 4,000-foot runway is large enough for any air ambulance to land, according to Thatcher.
“What that will do is bring those approaches back at night,” Heinen said.
Currently the city does not have enough right-of-way on neighboring ground to keep the runway at 4,200 feet. The original 1984 “clear breeze easement” on neighboring ground was incorrect because the runway was 200 feet off from where it was indicated on the plans. The existing approaches are also affected by US-24 highway and irrigation pivots on two farms.
Thatcher said the expansion could be made by buying land, but would be expensive and the current landowners aren’t willing to sell.
“No one wants that (to use eminent domain),” Heinen said.
Thatcher said the city’s goal is first to bring the airport back into compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules and said the city will then work with and talk to the neighboring property owners about improvements the FAA requires, including extending the runway.
The city is not in danger of being cited for violations by the FAA, Thatcher said.
Plans include upgrades, expansion
Heinen said there are many things his company would like to do at the airport, including putting a spigot so pilots can wash their planes, drafting an airport policy and procedure manual, and adding hangars.
Heinen said the company’s goal is to turn the Clay Center airport into a “hub” for the aerial application spray business and cater to maintenance on their planes. Spray planes tend to get pushed back on maintenance because they take up a lot of space. Eventually they’d like to build a larger maintenance facility.
“There is a lot of agricultural aircraft in this state and Nebraska and as they get more complex and complicated, the problem with those airplanes ..., they take up so much space,” Heinen said. “The guys who are working on the King Airs and Cheyennes of the world, they don’t have the space to work on such a large aircraft, and so they get pushed to the back of the list. But we are definitely on a time line. They have to be done in the winter and back out in the spring.”
Sixty percent of airports in Kansas have aerial spray applicators based on them as the only business, Heinen said.
Adding more T-hangars is another goal. Currently 18 planes are on the list waiting to rent space at the airport, Heinen said.
New managers work ‘behind the scenes’
Despite claims that the new managers aren’t fulfilling their contract, Thatcher said the city is “100 percent satisfied” with the performance and service provided by Heinen Brothers Agra Services, who has held the fixed-based operator and manager contracts since June, 2013.
The contract was written in a way to allow the company not to have someone there 100 percent of the time. Heinen said that was intentional because they knew as aerial spray applicators, they couldn’t always be there, especially during the spray season.
That’s different than the way the airport used to be run.
Heinen said all of the things required to keep an airport going are being taken care of “behind the scenes,” including safety requirements and inspections.
The airport manager contract calls for Heinen Brothers to provide an on-site manger, which the company had until a few months ago. A few people have been interviewed for the position.
“There are some exciting things we’d like to do out there, but we’re kind of hamstrung right now,” Heinen said.
Hangars in dispute
Currently usage of two T-hangars on the north side of the airport is in dispute. Those hangars, which are larger than other hangars for rent, were supposed to be turned over to Heinen Brothers, which the city has not been able to do because the former airport manager Mike Spicer has occupied them, according to Thatcher.
“The city has not been able to fulfill its contract with Heinen Brothers,” Thatcher said. “It’s been said there’s been discrimination because they won’t have a hangar to do maintenance out of. It’s not the city’s requirement to provide any business with a building for them to carry business on.”
Heinen said the issue isn’t that they won’t lease to Spicer or want to keep him from doing maintenance at the airport. The issue is, his company is entitled by contract to use the two hangars in question.
In an ongoing civil case, a district court judge recently ruled that Spicer has a right to lease space at the airport but that the city could also evict them with notice, Thatcher said.
A formal letter has been sent to Spicer informing him of the eviction, Thatcher said.
Thatcher said Spicer turned over no keys to the locks on the hangars, which the Heinens became responsible for starting on June 1.
“When we walked into this, we walked in with no paperwork, no paperwork on who was in the hangars,” Heinen said. “(We received) no paperwork for the Department of Transportation, no paperwork about the airport with the FAA... I had nothing to work with. We’re into nine months of this, starting from scratch.”