Bill lets FAA
help parks control
their air space

Hawaii's Volcanoes and
Haleakala parks would be able
to ban air tour operations

Debris removed from Big Isle crash site

By Rod Thompson
Star-Bulletin

HILO -- When a tour plane crashed in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park 11 days ago, park officials commented that they had no control over park air space.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted to change that.

Sen. Daniel Akaka announced that the Senate passed a measure in the Air Transportation Improvement Act of 1999 that allows for the creation of "air tour management plans" for national parks affected



by tour flights.

In Hawaii that means the Volcanoes park and Haleakala National Park on Maui. The bill was co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, where flights over Grand Canyon National Park are also considered a problem.

The measure has already been approved by the House and now goes to a conference committee for differences between the versions to be ironed out.

Strictly speaking, the Federal Aviation Administration, which controls air traffic across the nation, will retain jurisdiction. But the bill calls for the FAA to work in cooperation with the National Park Service to develop the management plans.

Other affected parties such as the tour operators themselves and environmental groups will participate in the process.

A plan could ban all flights and could extended to a half mile outside a park. That didn't please Big Island air tour operator Phil Auldridge.

"We're concerned that they're using a sledgehammer to do a flyswatter's job," he said.

The bill could make sense when applied to narrow Yosemite Valley, he said.

In the lava flow areas in the volcanoes park there's is virtually no one on the ground who is disturbed by tour flights, he said.

Flying over the area since 1986, he's seen people hiking below maybe five times, he said.

Calls for restricting flights have been made by people along the flight route disturbed by noise, he said.

Auldridge says the only legitimate reason to restrict flights is safety.

Gary Barbano, a planner in the Honolulu office of the National Park Service, disagrees.

He has heard almost continual noise at times hiking in the back country of Volcanoes park and Haleakala.

"These are areas that are designated wilderness. Those helicopters disrupt that experience," he said.

At Haleakala, park Superintendent Don Reeser said air tour operators are already flying under a voluntary interim plan to reduce noise.

They can't fly over the summit crater, and they must fly outside the crater's south rim before popping up at a designated spot to look over the crater.

"Complaints by wilderness users are significantly down," he said.

"It's a controversial issue," Barbano conceded. But Haleakala shows it can be done, he said. "It can be worked out."

Debris removed from Big Island plane crash location Star-Bulletin staff HILO -- The 10,200-foot-high site on Mauna Loa where a Piper Navajo Chieftain crashed Sept. 25, killing 10 people, has been cleaned up, said Hawaii Volcanoes National Park ranger Dick Rasp. "You can hardly tell anything happened," he said. Investigators wrapped up their on-site work and returned to Washington, D.C., late last week, Rasp said. Maui helicopter pilot Tom Hauptman removed the debris from the site Friday.