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McCain, Reid succeed in quest to stop Grand Canyon overflight rules
July 2, 2012I guess the third time was the charm for John McCain in his relentless quest to undermine the National Park Service’s decades-long effort to slightly reduce aircraft overflight impacts in the Grand Canyon backcountry. Since the NPS released its draft plan several months ago, McCain had crafted amendments to a couple of pieces of legislation […]
McCain amendment aims to undercut Grand Canyon noise reduction plan
February 17, 2011Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would derail the National Park Service’s recently-released compromise plan to reduce noise levels in the Grand Canyon. McCain’s initiative, apparently included in an amendment to another bill (details are sketchy so far, with nothing on McCain’s website so far), would declare that keeping half of Grand Canyon National […]
Will Senate swallow McCain’s bait on last-minute Grand Canyon overflight intervention?
March 22, 2010UPDATE 3/25: In response to a quick wave of outrage on editorial pages and some Park Service lobbying, Senator McCain has withdrawn his proposed amendment. It remains to be seen whether he will let the NPS EIS process set the final rules, or seek to have the Senate write rules if the process lags or […]
National Park air tours restricted at sunrise and sunset for first time
July 22, 2015It’s not much, but it’s a start. The troubled FAA/NPS collaborative planning process has completed an actual final plan to manage air tours at a national park. But don’t get too excited: it’s not a full-on Air Tour Management Plan, as was the goal for all national parks with sightseeing flights when the two agencies […]
FAA spurns opportunity for quiet area protection in traffic pattern updates
June 30, 2015A new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) effort to modernize air traffic flow around major cities is ignoring the chance to do slight re-routing that would minimize air traffic over dwindling areas of natural quiet. The FAA is in the midst of a multi-year process to update the traffic patterns in and out of airports in 17 metropolitan areas. Each “metroplex” […]
FAA adds insult to injury with new Grand Canyon flight permits
February 10, 2014Eighteen months after Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Harry Reid (D-NV) joined forces to undermine the National Park Service’s Grand Canyon air tour management plan just before it was set to go into effect, the Federal Aviation Administration apparently feels that the discounted per-flight fee for quiet aircraft is not incentive enough to encourage the […]
Congressmen aim to derail Grand Canyon air tour rules
July 29, 2011As regular readers will know, the National Park Service completed an epic planning process earlier this year when it released proposed rules governing air tours at Grand Canyon National Park. After over two decades of discussion, including a failed attempt at coming to a consensus decision with all parties a few years back, NPS planners […]