Somerset: FAA says lease with incoming FBO violates federal regulations

May 27--SOMERSET -- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has sent a letter to the Lake Cumberland Airport warning that the new lease brokered with a fixed-based operator (FBO) is in violation of regulations.

Kathleen Bergen, manager of Atlantic Media Relations with the FAA, said the new lease violates one of many "assurances" the airport made to receive funding.

"Any time an airport accepts federal funding, they have to comply with 39 grant assurances," Bergen said.

Bergen said Lake Cumberland Airport is currently found to be in breech of assurance 24, which states that the airport should do everything in its power to get fair market value on every transaction it makes. The FAA believes that the incentives offered to the new FBO did not comply with the fair market value policy.

Bergen said the FAA also found "equity issues" with what was offered to the former FBO and what was offered to the new one.

"In this case we received a complaint and did an informal investigation, and we found that the airport was not getting fair market value," Bergen said.

The informal investigation consisted of FAA representatives contacting every party involved (airport board of directors, and both FBOs) and getting a statement about what happened. FAA officials then sent a letter to Don Bandy, chairman of the Somerset-Pulaski County Airport Board, addressing their concerns. Bergen said since the letter has been sent the Board has until May 31 to send a reply containing a course for corrective action. If no response is given, the FAA will launch a formal investigation to determine what is being done. She said that to date, no response has been submitted.

The letter says that, if no corrective action is taken, The FAA "will strongly consider placing the airport in non-compliance." A possible outcome of this is the suspension of the airport's federal funding, but Berger said that is not likely to happen.

"The FAA makes every effort to work with airports to bring them back into compliance with grant assurances," Bergen said. "Suspension of future federal funding under the Airport Improvement Program is a last resort after all efforts to resolve matters are exhausted."

Copyright 2012 - Commonwealth Journal, Somerset, Ky.