B-II or not B-II -- that is the question
Well, it's one of them, anyway: Pesky citizens are raising questions about the accuracy of some of the data contained in the proposed Airport Master Plan -- are we a B-II or a C-II? And what about the accuracy of reported air traffic numbers?
-- John Patten, 06/10/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

Got a comment? Make it here.

Lang shoots and scores
In the past weeks, Sue Lang of the Venice Neighborhoods Coalition has unearthed what she believes is a huge fiction that city hall would rather not let you know about. Lang wants to know what kind of an airport Venice is trying become, a B-II or a C-II (the last characters are Roman numerals, so it's read as B-2 or C-2).

The distinction is important: a C-II designation allows for heavier jets with wider wing spans. It also calls for much larger safety areas on both ends of both runways, ones that may be impossible to acheive due to the existent houses on Harbor Drive, the Circus Bridge, and the two bodies of water at the south end of the runways.

A B-II designation would also call for some expansion of the safety areas, but not nearly as invasive as a C-II.

Venice Airport was at one time a B-II. The first appearance of the C-II designation appears to be in the 2000 Airport Master Plan (eyes more studious than mine are currently fact-checking this). The MEA consultants that the city has hired is continuing on with the C-II designation in the proposed Airport Master Plan. How we are going to move back the water in the Gulf of Mexico is still unexplained. Another mystery is the question of how we jumped inexplicably from a B-II to a C-II on paper at a time when no improvements to the airport were being made (or were even under consideration) that would warrant such a leap.

I brought up this discrepancy at the last Airport Advisory Board meeting. I approached the topic carefully, stating that I did not fully understand the issue yet (I still don't), and that the questions raised by Lang appeared to have some legs. Bottom line: this issue is either a huge red herring or it is a huge political nightmare. The fact that the Airport Advisory Board blinked politely and refused to broach the subject on any substantive level confirmed my suspicions: the question is more of the nightmare variety.

The MEA Group, the city's paid consultants who helped author the proposed Airport Master Plan,  did respond to the issue at the meeting, basically stating that the city does not want to move backwards towards a B-II designation. Progress and all that.

Add to the mix that the FAA has expanded the safety requirements for both B-II and C-II airports in the intervening years since 2000.

These questions have been floating around for some time now and city hall has yet to make any effort to educate the public or shed any light on the matter. Still, the questions remain: how did we get to a C-II designation? Why would the FAA ultimately approve a C-II designation when it is clear that it would be geographically impossible for the Venice Airport to meet all of the criteria? Do we really want bigger and heavier jets with the accompanying noise factors when we can clearly live without them (or at least with less of them and in smaller sizes) as a B-II?

Well, let's look at the maps
A map of the northern end of the runways with the required B-II and C-II safety areas marked off (yellow is for the FAA requirements for B-II, blue for C-II) clearly shows the dilemma. These are all supposed to be cleared areas -- flat land with no obstructions. Note that houses, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the South Bridge are all in the colored areas.

(click on the map to see a larger version)

The southern half of that same map shows that by sticking to a C-II designation as closely as geographically possible, the VGA golf course will be impacted much, much more than city hall has been stating so far. It will cut the golf course entirely into separate and non-traversable halves, making it unlikely that a the golf course. as such, would even continue to be viable.

(click on the map to see a larger version)

Just for your visual sanity, here's how it all looks currently:

(click on the map to see a larger version)

So, both the city and the FAA have the Venice Airport designated as a C-II, something that it clearly no longer fits the definition of. One obvious question arises: what kind of liability does that place us in in the event of a crash? Studious folks are looking into that angle as well, and the early information doesn't look good. Could it be that by claiming to be a C-II, we could set ourselves up for a nasty judgment in the event of a crash, especially if it can be successfully argued that the crash could have been prevented if we had the proper claimed C-II safety margins in actual existence? The early answers to this question are not pretty, but the subject is not yet fully explored. Needless to say, city hall hasn't mentioned a peep about this angle of inquiry.

B-II option ain't all that pretty, either, but...
No matter which designation the city goes for, the VGA golf course will be impacted, and not in a minor way. Still, with the C-II designation, the impact will be greater with no guarantee that the FAA will overlook that some required safety areas will be non-existent for safety purposes (safety areas extending into homes along Harbor Drive and the Gulf of Mexico, for instance).

In other words, we could push for a current C-II, make as many changes as are geographically possible, impact the land in a greater way than needed (requiring an even greater need for more income to the airport in the process), only to have the FAA say no.

It's almost like the city is creating some unnecessary financial need at the airport in order to push for development that the city says will satisfy that need.

Of course the city would never do that, right? Well, take a look at the proposed landing tower, one that there is still no clear consensus on the need for.  Emergency Services Director Mike Johnson recently asked for a $3 million earmark on the proposed one cent sales tax spending budget, this for a new fire station at the airport which would be needed if the tower is built. Then there's the tower itself. The argument for that is that it will be needed due to increased traffic from more and bigger planes, and of course more and bigger planes will be encouraged to land at the airport due to the bump in designation to a C-II, which we already claim to be but clearly are not.

Add to that the inflated monetary needs figures that writer Ed Martin picked up on -- the city's fiscal projections included the airport claiming depreciation on one of its most most costly assets, the runways, when in actuality, 95% of the funding for runway rebuilding comes from federal grants and not city or airport funds. The city eventually acknowledged that Martin was right and adjusted their figures... somewhat.

180,000 reasons why you'll never get a tan at Venice Beach again
Then there are MEA's projected numbers of estimated current air traffic at the airport. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported on May 31 that MEA states that the airport already hosts 180,000 takeoffs and landings per year. The number was buried towards the end of the article, indicating that the Herald-Trib probably didn't notice the significance of the cited figure. The number, from MEA, is now worked into the proposed Airport Master Plan.

180,000.

Wait... what???

Broken down, that's 494.5 a day or 20.6 per hour. More understandably, that's one takeoff or landing every three minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Go out to the Venice Airport at any time of day at all. Do some amateur planespotting for any 15 minute period that you choose. One thing will become abundantly clear: 180,000 is a number that is clearly waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond the limit of possibility.

In the writing biz, this kind of information can be referred to as brown data, a reference to the source of the extracted information.

On the day that the Herald-Trib published the story, I noted this highly improbable statistical oddity on the front of this web site in the link to the Herald-Trib article and received a number of e-mails about that one blurbed link. Apparently I was not the only one to notice the statistical improbability, as city hall has also received a number of emails on the same subject.

     In order to compare actual numbers for an airport to the 'guesstimates' made by MEA, I offer the following: RSW (Ft. Myers) had 10,181 takeoffs and landings in the month of April 2007. This was an all time high record for RSW. If you take that number times 12 months, Ft. Myers would have 122,172 takeoffs and landings per year. Reference: www.flylcpa.com/rsw/news/2007/newsreleases/PR0718_Apr2007Stats.php
     Using MEA's figures of 180,000 takeoffs and landings per year, VNC would have to have 15,000 per month which is 4,819 more takeoffs and landings per month than the record setting figures at RSW. I'm reasonably certain we can all agree this is not happening. For that reason, I will again ask you to have MEA lower their Airport Master Plan numbers considerably to reflect a more accurate and honest number for takeoffs and landings at VNC.
-- email from Venice resident Peg Tomanio to Mayor Fred Hammett, 06/07/07

Still, the city is supporting this fiction. Mayor Fred Hammett stands by the accuracy of the number, stating that the number seems inflated as it includes touch and go landings in in-flight training. According to his response, the mayor is gullible enough to believe those numbers or he has made the assumption that Venice residents are total idiots with no basic math skills -- either option is scary:

     The number of flights question is often discussed. The airport folks are trying to get some additional data, but the counts get skewed some by the flight school activity because all of the "touch and go" actions count as 2 "flights". While accurate in count, a little misleading in the counts relative to general aviation.
-- Hammett's emailed reply, 06/08/07

Councilman John Simmonds had a somewhat crankier answer for Tomanio:

     Peg I said we would check it.  If your talking about Ft. Meyers {sic} commercial It wasn't all that active when I was using it. I will not debate this item any more for the time being.
-- Simmonds' emailed reply, 06/08/07

Now I've stood out on the Venice Pier for a few hours at a time on a number of occasions, and you get a clear view of all airport activity from there, especially at night. Hours can go by without a plane landing or taking off, which in turn should skew the numbers greatly. Let's assume for a moment that MEA's numbers are accurate. If what my eyes are telling me is true about evening traffic at the airport, there's some dangerous and crazy jam-packed days where planes are landing and taking off every thirty seconds or less in order to make up for the slack in the evening numbers. Touch and go training flights couldn't even begin to pick up that existent slack -- there would have to be some daylight hours when the Venice Airport turns into O'Hare International. If MEA's numbers are correct, that is.

The smell test -- How much would you pay for all this?
But wait, there's more. MEA is still apparently standing by their numbers, and they have asserted that the number will only increase in the future as the airport continues to grow in usage. MEA thinks that is a good thing.

If you follow that logic, beachgoers along Venice beaches will never see the skies again, as nearly the entire island will be shaded by the blackened skies of stacked up air traffic. Think of London during the blitz bombings of 1940 and 1941, and even that doesn't begin to compare to what MEA is projecting in air traffic over the skies of Venice.

John Simmonds has a pet phrase he uses when information that comes to him is less than credible: "This doesn't pass the smell test."

City residents have been trying to tell council that very thing about this whole airport development debacle. City hall is apparently located too close to a fish market for the mayor and council to notice the same odors.

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.