FAA: Anniston Airport Understaffed, Behind on Maintenance

The Federal Aviation Administration sent Anniston city officials a “letter of investigation” April 8 warning of “repeat discrepancies” at Anniston Regional Airport, where inspectors in March found cracked runways and poorly maintained lights and signs.

The city is “not equipping personnel with sufficient resources to meet minimum safety requirements” and “appropriate replacement parts are not on hand to maintain runway and taxiway visual navigational aids,” the letter states.

The Anniston City Council met behind closed doors earlier this week to discuss the letter, council members now say. At the time of the meeting, council members invoked a law that allows the council to go into executive session to discuss matters that are likely to wind up in court.

One member of the council says he doesn’t believe the FAA letter met the standard for a closed-door discussion.

“We have some things that we definitely need to talk about,” said City Councilman Ben Little. “That’s a public conversation, not a private conversation.”

Anniston Regional Airport is surrounded on most sides by the city of Oxford, but it belongs to the city of Anniston. In the 20th century — when the Army’s Fort McClellan was still in operation — the airport offered a small amount of regular passenger service.

Today it’s largely used by private pilots and, city officials say, occasional military flights. Charter flights have been known to arrive and depart, mostly during football season or in advance of races at Talladega Superspeedway. The FAA considers Anniston a Class IV airport, capable of serving “only unscheduled operations of large carrier aircraft,” according to FAA documents.

Many of the airport’s operations are run by Anniston Aviation, a private company under contract to provide services such as fuel and aircraft maintenance. But the city holds the FAA certificate for the airport, and city officials say maintenance of much of the airport’s infrastructure is the responsibility of the city’s Public Works Department.

FAA inspectors visited the airport March 12-13, according to an FAA letter to public works director David Arnett. Those inspectors found “repeat discrepancies” at the airport, some of them first identified in inspections going back to 2017. Among the findings:

— Aprons, taxiways and runways “contained multiple potentially hazardous ruts, humps and depressions.”

— Pavement was cracked and contained “loose aggregate,” small chunks of concrete that weren’t “removed promptly.” The FAA requires daily inspections of flight areas to find small, loose items that can be sucked into aircraft engines or otherwise damage airplanes.

— Pavement wasn’t sufficiently drained, allowing water to pool and potentially obscure directional markings.

— “Marking, lighting and signage are not maintained.”

— The wind sock, a visual indicator of windspeed and direction, isn’t visible to pilots on final approach or before takeoff

— Some discrepancies weren’t reported in Notices to Airmen, an FAA document pilots regularly check for updates on unusual conditions at airports.

Inspectors also found that the city’s airport staff hadn’t kept up with required training on how to drive on the flightline, how to inspect fuel operations and how to put together a “wildlife hazard management plan.”

Those wildlife plans aren’t necessarily there to protect wildlife: Collisions with birds are sometimes a cause of aircraft accidents. FAA documents record four wildlife collisions at Anniston Regional in the past two years, including an incident when a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet struck a deer on the runway. The other three collisions involved birds or bats. None resulted in serious damage, according to the FAA documents.

City officials insist the airport is safe.

“If it wasn’t safe, it wouldn’t be operating,” said Arnett, the public works director.

Arnett said the city has three employees dedicated to the airport, one of them full-time and two part-time. Another eight public works employees are available to do occasional work at the airport. Arnett said many of the training-related complaints are paperwork issues. In many cases, he said, employees have been trained but didn’t certify that training with the FAA.

City officials say the city did lose track of airport management over the years, due in part to turnover in some city positions. The council hired Steven Folks, a former parks and recreation director, as city manager in October. Arnett was hired as public works director in December.

Attempts to reach FAA inspector Nicholas LeMay, who performed the inspection, were not successful Thursday.

The FAA’s letter says the city “is not providing sufficient or qualified personnel” to safely run the airport, “nor is the day-to-day maintenance of the airfield being conducted by a large enough staff.” Arnett said that determination is based largely on the expectations set in the Airport Certification Manual, a document the city drafted and provided to the FAA.

“We gave them the recipe, and we need to follow the recipe,” Arnett said.

Arnett and Folks noted that the city received a $4 million grant last year for runway renovation, a project they said will likely address many of the pavement problems mentioned in the inspection.

It’s not clear what the FAA would do if the city fails to correct the problems listed in the inspection. Mayor Jack Draper said he invoked the executive session rule, allowing the council to meet behind closed doors, because some of the administrative actions the FAA could take would be similar to a legal proceeding.

“It’s in the nature of litigation,” Draper said.

Little, the councilman, said he didn’t hear anything at the closed-door meeting that justified an executive session.

“It’s downright shenanigans,” said Little, who provided The Anniston Star with a copy of the FAA letter. “The public should know.”

Little said he left the meeting before it ended, largely out of concern that it was being held improperly.

Draper said he believes the city should consider a partnership with other local governments to operate the airport.

“This is an instance where we could work together for it to be a truly regional asset,” he said.

Little said that issue was discussed at the closed-door meeting. He said the council had considered a partnership, along with a name change for the airport, in the past, and rejected it. It’s unclear whether such a proposal actually came up for a vote. Little said he opposed a partnership that would rename the airport.

“I’m not running away from the name of Anniston,” Little said.

Little said he’ll bring the airport issue up at the next council meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.

———

©2020 The Anniston Star (Anniston, Ala.)

Visit The Anniston Star (Anniston, Ala.) at www.annistonstar.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.