A single-engine plane takes off from Lunken Airport Monday. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

By James Pilcher
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Nearly a year to the day that Cincinnati city officials pledged to keep the status quo at Lunken Airport as they studied its future, a renewed battle appears to be looming over the size of the planes that can use it.

On Monday, the board that advises City Council on Lunken voted 7-1 to recommend that council raise the airport's posted weight limit from 70,000 pounds to 100,000 pounds and keep that limit in place for 10 years. The vote was jeered by an audience of about 150 spectators - most of them residents living near the airport, who fear increased noise and pollution and decreased property values.

If approved by council, the move would allow airplanes as large as certain models of DC-9s or Gulfstream Vs to land without obtaining a waiver. It would cement a compromise among city administrators, airport tenants and the oversight board, although it had no standing on whether the airport - which now has 130,000 takeoffs and landings annually - would eventually be used for scheduled passenger service.

But today, Councilman Chris Monzel intends to introduce a resolution that would keep the 70,000-pound limit in place, saying that he wants the surrounding neighborhoods protected. He wants the city and the advisory board - made up of representatives from the community, airport users and airport businesses appointed by council and the mayor - to live up to a previous agreement to not change a thing at Lunken until a master plan and a separate noise study are completed.

At stake is how the city-owned airport, and perhaps other small airports throughout the region, will proceed in the post-Sept. 11 aviation environment.

"If we wait until all the studies are done, it (the weight limit) could be raised to 120,000 pounds or even higher, and that would be a big mistake," Lunken Airport Oversight Advisory Board Chairman Rob Rubin told the crowd at an office near the airport before the board passed the resolution.

"To me, to hold the limit to 100,000 pounds and keep that status quo for 10 years is a good compromise," Mr. Rubin said. "If we delay this, we don't make the advocates of raising the limits even higher go away, and would give them more strength."

But Mr. Monzel said that to raise the limit now would be premature.

"We're trying to keep our neighborhoods stable; but here, where we've got five of the most stable neighborhoods in the city, we seem to be thumbing our nose at them," said Mr. Monzel.

Council must approve any changes at Lunken, which the city owns, as it does the Blue Ash airport.

"If you do this and City Council approves it, it's like a judge passing sentence on someone before he knows all the facts," Mariemont City Council member Doug Adams told the advisory board before the vote. "Keep the status quo until we all know what we're talking about.''

Last Dec. 10, former city Transportation Director John Deatrick told the advisory board that there should be no changes in the posted weight limits at Lunken until a master plan was completed.

The $250,000 study (the Federal Aviation Administration is paying for 90 percent, the city 10 percent) has been let out for bid, and probably won't be finished for another 1‡ years. The airport is also conducting a separate $225,000 study on the airport's noise levels. The FAA is paying for 90 percent of the study, which should be completed by mid-2003.

In addition, Mr. Deatrick last year said that the airport would not pursue commercial passenger service at the east-side airport or seek to change its rating to allow passenger airlines with larger than 30-seat planes to operate.

The FAA has already rated Lunken ready to handle scheduled passenger service as long as the planes are 29 seats or smaller, along with unlimited charter service. Through a $150,000 program to make the airport more secure in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the airport is close to being ready if passenger carriers using 30-seaters or larger wanted to use Lunken.

Last January, the board incorporated Mr. Deatrick's pledge into a resolution and then sent it on to City Council.

Current city Transportation And Engineering Director Eileen Enabnit insisted the effort to change the weight limit did not mean promises had been broken. She said that City Council never passed its own resolution, and gave city administration time to work out a compromise on the weight limit.

"We're well within the spirit of the agreement," Ms. Enabnit said, pointing out that planes larger than 70,000 pounds already routinely land at Lunken after obtaining a waiver and that other airports of Lunken's size already have 100,000-pound limits or higher.

City officials say the 100,000-pound limit would not markedly change the kinds of airplanes that use Lunken, and while they couldn't say how many more planes over the limit would use the airport, it would make it more competitive with similar airports, such as Cleveland's Burke Lake Front Airport, where the limit is 113,000 pounds.

Ms. Enabnit said there have been overtures from some smaller airlines about service here, but that the city was sticking to its agreement not to initiate passenger service - although if an airline insisted, the airport could not refuse unless it was willing to do without federal funding, which was nearly $460,000 this year.

Still, several board members told the crowd that raising the limits had nothing to do with passenger service, and that the compromise was needed to keep the airport viable for corporate jets and charter companies.

Ms. Enabnit said preliminary estimates call for the new weight limit to raise $600,000 annually in new revenue for the businesses at Lunken, meaning an extra $35,000-$40,000 a year for the city.

"We're not looking for passenger or freight service with this," said board member Tom Edwards, who represents the businesses at Lunken.

"We should do this to protect the home team, and that home team is the corporate aircraft."

Neighbors are worried about the potential of more airport noise and upset at what they call an about-face.

Others worry about what that might mean for general aviation at Lunken and whether that would push amateur pilots to smaller airports such as Blue Ash or Butler County Regional Airport.

At Monday's meeting, members of the Lunken Neighborhood Coalition, a group formed two years ago to fight expansion at Lunken, accused the advisory board of not adequately considering the concerns of citizens.

"The users of the airport and the businesses got to city government, and this is about selling fuel and not about any kind of compromise," said Nancy Drambarean, a Mount Lookout resident and one of the founders of the approximately 300-member coalition.

E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com