Through-the-Fence—Part 2 ...

… FAA’s airports division offers some clarification following last week’s blog which generated a significant amount of interest. Randall Fiertz, director of airport compliance and field operations at the agency, explains that “there has been no change on FAA policy on this since at least the 1980s.†The reasons for the latest guidance letter, he says, is that FAA wanted to put together in one place the guidance on through-the-fence and it was concerned due to recent residential developments being built or proposed at publicly funded airports. Fiertz is quick to stress that the primary focus is on residential development. Relates Fiertz, “A couple of things happened. We updated our compliance order, of which through-the-fence is a very small piece. At the same time, while FAA has always been against through-the-fence residential, we suddenly started hearing about some major through-the-fence residential developments taking place, particularly in the Northwest Mountain Region. These are very large developments – one was 200 homes. Then we started hearing about one or more developers who were actually promoting the idea of residential through-the-fence on publicly funded airports. Once you got to that size and magnitude, it clearly was something that drew our attention. “Our Northwest Mountain Region office started to go out and actually find out how big the problem really was. In doing that, they uncovered a number of developments where we needed to take some action. “A lot of people got jazzed up when they heard that we were being more assertive in pursuing that policy.†On the topic of what through-the-fence agreements would be allowable, Fiertz comments, “With non-residential, it could very well be appropriate. An example is an aircraft manufacturer which needs access to an airport but we don’t necessarily want them on the airport because we don’t want them taking up that amount of space and blocking other aeronautical activities. There are certain ways that a through-the-fence agreement can be structured that we would support. There are certain businesses and types of activities where it actually makes a lot of sense. “We want to remind our offices that we need to be more involved in these things with the airports. We want to have more oversight of through-the-fence agreements as they’re being contemplated.†The agency also wants to minimize future residential through-the-fence agreements and to ensure that they aren’t renewed when their term expires or when residential properties are sold. Adds Fiertz, “There are a couple of reasons why we don’t like through-the-fence residential. One is, we’ve had cases where we’ve seen that a through-the-fence agreement undermines the future capacity capability of the airport, where certain rights have been given in perpetuity or for very long periods of time. It may be a taxiway for the through-the-fence agreement that blocks airport development. We’ve seen residential hangars go up in places where it actually blocked the line of sight from the tower. “The other problem is, if an airport operator allows residential through-the-fence, we’re concerned that it undermines their future capability of restricting residential development next to the airport. If the airport gives the OK for one type of residential -- and we understand why people in aviation might want that -- if someone else then wants to build a development on the other side of the airport, it undermines the ability to say ‘no’. “FAA has been pursuing this policy in order to help the GA community, not to restrict it.†[FAA is taking comments on the policy through December 21 and encourages interested parties to comment through their aviation trade associations or directly to: Mr. Charles Erhard, 800 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20591.] Thanks for reading. jfi