PAVE, EXTEND PREVAILING RUNWAY IS BEST ECONOMIC OPTION FOR AIRPORT FUTURE
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — Consultants have their heads in the clouds if they think closing the only prevailing-winds runway at Muskoka Airport will bolster local economic prospects, says Earle Robinson, a local aviation expert.
Flights of fancy, say he and other Muskoka small plane pilots and owners who are at cross-purposes with consultants on cross-winds.
They say the best voting option at Tuesday district council meeting is to pave and expand the “09-27” grass strip for jets to land into the prevailing wind — not rebuild it further north and off-kilter.
“Then you’d have two jet runways to land large planes scheduled flights, which no other Central Ontario airport could compete with economically,” explains Robinson.
“It would give the airport the 95 per cent usability it lacks now.”
And still achieve everyone’s shared goals of aviation building expansion and public prosperity.
If passed as is, Robinson told council in an earlier presentation last month: “In my mind it is an existential threat to aviation safety and future airport economic growth.”
He fears local grass-roots experience is being belittled by politicians who don’t understand what they’re talking about.
Alan Clark, another Bracebridge pilot and hangar owner, concurs.
He says “build the infrastructure right first, then build around it.
“Then it will take off.”
Fellow pilot Garth Elliot, who also addressed council last month, has been as opposed. He offered his own opinion yesterday in a letter to the editor here. Robinson, too, has written again to council to offer further counsel.
They’re the experts on the ground and in the air who have been taking off and landing across the country and in Muskoka for decades — since there were once three runways built at this airport as part of Second World emergency measures.
Robinson, an engineer and meteorologist for more than 37 years, has been a pilot as long.
He is president of the Muskoka Flying Club and one of dozens who own planes and hangars at the airport.
He was the national manager for the Meteorological Service of Canada’s strategic engineering division with the atmospheric monitoring and water survey directorate at Downsview.
Thus his credentials are well established.
Robinson has advised Muskoka’s airport officials and previous councils in the past. So understands the challenges a new “threat to the Muskoka economy” this plan proposes.
This plan puts at risk recent successes like scheduled summer flight services by Porter Air and Fly GTA.
“We’ve been here before. It’s like déjà vu. The same old crap,” he says with an air of frustration.
“It’s so myopic. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to think bigger,” he says, noting the failed SNC-Lavalin proposal a decade ago, when a “moratorium” was put on the grass runway until a competent skills-based airport advisory board was established.
Out of it comes a report Robinson calls “myopic.”
“I don’t understand how the consultants with their skills can come up with this.”
To him it’s simple.
The problem: the grass runway is in the way of building expansion at the south end. And booming competition around it from at least three airports less than an hour away in Parry Sound, at Lake Simcoe Regional Airport and the popular private airport Lake Saint John in Ramara.
The solution: pave the grass runway, expand it east and west from 2,400 to 5,000 feet; and put new buildings across the Gravenhurst Parkway — or on the other side of north-south runway by way of a new road off the north end of the Gravenhurst Parkway.
Problems solved. Joint goals achieved.
But with prevailing winds from the west, which cut across the existing “18-36” main north-south paved runway, wind turbulence is a major argument against more buildings at the south end, where two large hangars already house successful paint and refurbishing businesses.
New international aviation building standards, says Robinson, call for a 1:35 slope
West winds that cut across the larger runway make take-offs and landing times more difficult and affect its usability factor.
Robinson explained all this Jan. 29 in a detailed presentation to the district’s committee of the whole.
He showed the gust factor in slides (seen here) detailing how winds blowing west to east hit tall buildings interrupting the air flows and landings.
That means buildings with 1:35 pitches need to be further away from runways.
Robinson says they should be on the other side of the Gravenhurst Parkway, where a decade ago development was proposed by adjacent land owner Roland Filzmaier but rejected by council.
Robinson also notes were they to build a new grass runway to the north it would be aligned well for prevailing winds. But when the airport expands this new runway to the required 5,000 feet necessary for jets, they’d have to expand west across the Gravenhurst Parkway into marsh. This is both logistically difficult and a very poor economic choice.
Or move the parkway.
Robinson, whose arguments throw in to question the consultants’ report, concludes that paving the east-west runway makes the most economic sense.
He says paving a mile of highway takes you nowhere, which council easily approves every year. But paving a mile of runway for the same cost will solve this airport’s growth problem forever.
Email [email protected] or [email protected]
Celebrating 26 YEARS of ‘Local Online Journalism’
Follow us at Twitter @muskokatoday & on Facebook at mclairmont1
Leave your comments at end of story. Or write a letter to the Editor at [email protected]
And subscribe for $25 by e-transferring to [email protected]
Or online at https://muskokatoday.com/subscriptions
