On Independence Air; EPA

As of this Thursday, January, 5, Independence Air, based at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, will cease operations. Its parent, FLYi Inc., cites the inability to garner new outside investors as the reason. It's been an uphill struggle from the beginning in 2004, when the former Atlantic Coast Airlines, a profitable contract feeder for United Airlines, decided to go it alone as a carrier following Uniteds bankruptcy protection filing. In all, some 2,500 of 2,800 employees will be immediately laid off. Many questioned Independence's prospects for success from the start, suggesting that disconnecting from United was not the wrong decision; having a stand-alone airline built on regional jets was. Reports say United and JetBlue intend to fill some of the void at Dulles. One question is, what does this do for the Dulles staff, which is already involved in a whirlwind of construction and capacity activity? The other is, what happens to its RJ fleet? According to Denver-based The Boyd Group, which specializes in airline analysis, there are currently some 1,500-plus RJs in the U.S. fleet today a number which the firm says is about 200 too many. * * * Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly easing up on its Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) rule, notably by allowing for an option by which smaller facilities that store less than 10,000 gallons of oil/fuel can self-certify their SPCC plans. Also of note is that reports suggest EPA is also backing off of a strict requirement that calls for secondary containment for fuel trucks at airports. The latter proposal has been, at best, controversial from the start; at the worst, it's bureaucracy gone wild. Fixed base operators and others transporting fuel on airport grounds can be forgiven (perhaps not by EPA) if they remain unclear from the exact requirements, based on published reports to date. This is a part of the SPCC rule that makes little sense. Worst part is, after 15 years of looking at what regulations were needed for airports for the handling of fuel and oil products, EPA suddenly gets interested in secondary containment for refuelers. I remain convinced it's because someone at the agency finally decided to visit an airport to see exactly what they had been regulating all these years. (Note: Environmental attorney Bonni Kauffman will provide an in-depth analysis of the new requirements in the February issue of AIRPORT BUSINESS.) Thanks for reading.