Alaska Fire Service reacts to proposed changes at the Galena airport
4-13-07
KIYU (Tim Bodony)

Wildland firefighting operations in and out of Galena would be severely impacted if the FAA’s proposal for the Galena airport becomes reality. 

That’s according to Alaska Fire Service Galena Zone Manager Dave Whitmer. 

The Federal Aviation Administration announced in a March 15 public notice that, after the Air Force completes its pullout from Galena by October 1 of next year, it does not intend to take over the navigation aids nor the automated weather reporting system that the Air Force is leaving behind. 

Those navigation aids include the Instrument Landing System, or ILS, and the Visual Approach Slope Indicator, or VASI.    

Whitmer says that all of the Galena airport’s navaids are currently used by Alaska Fire Service passenger and firefighting planes.  But the automated weather observation system, or AWOS, is more important than anything else.   

Whitmer: "The ILS, the Visual Approach Slope Indicator, and high intensity light s are nice things to have, but are not as critical to our job as the AWOS. Without the AWOS, we essentially won't be able to do our job."

Everts Air Cargo and other commercial airlines share this view, since they would be forbidden from doing an instrument-guided approach to Galena without the information currently sent out by the AWOS.  Scheduled cargo and passenger and cargo service could not occur, and planes could only land when the cloud ceiling is more than 1000 feet above the ground, and when visibility is at least 3 miles.   

Using the ILS, a pilot can get into Galena when visibility is as low as half a mile.  Whitmer says that the accuracy of the ILS is great, but that new technologies, utilizing Global Positioning Satellites, are getting better and better.  Nationwide, technology like the ILS is being phased out. 

Whitmer: "A lot of the pilots these days are using the GPS approaches anyways.  GPS approaches are nearly as accurate as the ILS, and that seems to be the standard with which a lot of pilots operate [now]. That is not to say that every pilot or every ship is equipped or has the training to do that, but all of our's, in fact, do.  While the ILS is still a very nice tool for us to have, as an option, it's really the AWOS that is most critical to us."   

The Galena airport’s instrument landing navigation aides also allow it to serve as an alternate landing site for planes headed to northwest or northern Alaska.  This includes Alaska Airlines flights to Nome and Kotzebue, and fire service missions to deliver smokejumpers to wildfires.     

Whitmer expects that Galena’s status as an alternate landing site would also go away if there were no AWOS operating.   

Whitmer could not say for certain if the absence of an automated weather reporting system in Galena would force A-F-S to relocate its zone headquarters somewhere else. 

But considering how the lack of an AWOS would limit AFS’s ability to get planes in and out of Galena, Whitmer thinks that moving somewhere else is a logical possibility. 

Whitmer: "No AWOS certainly means that we are going to be severely handicapped. Whether that means that we completely have to go away, that's speculation I can't make right now. But it certainly means that we could only fly under VFR conditions, and I guess you could extrapolate from there, and say, 'well, if we could only fly under VFR conditions, maybe only x percentage of days could we actually do business. In which case our efficiency and effectiveness goes way down."

Whitmer also reports that Alaska Fire Service will be weighing in on the FAA’s decision, after getting feedback from many people within the organization.    

Whitmer: "We've queried all of our pilots that we have on board right now, given them forms to fill out and send back in.  All of our air service officers, our state aviation manager, a lot of the folks here at Alaska Fire Service have taken a very interested and active part in that response."   

The FAA is accepting public comments on its decision to not assume responsibility for Galena airport navigation or weather aides.  All comments must be received at the FAA’s Anchorage office by April 30.