[tkhayes]

I sent this today to the AA and the City Council of Laconia.

My perspective on the reality of skydiving operations at busy airports.

TK Hayes
Zephyrhills, FL
------------------------------------------------------------------------



July 23, 2009

Laconia Airport Authority

Ladies and Gentlemen;

My name is David 'TK' Hayes, and I manage one of the largest skydiving operations in the country, if not the world, here in Zephyrhills, Florida. *We operate several DeHavilland Twin Otters throughout the year and perform some 70,000-75,000 skydives and more than 3500 aircraft takeoffs and landings each year.

We operate EXACTLY 25nm from Tampa International airport, and 46nm from Orlando International Airport in some of the busiest airspace in the Southeast USA. *Zephyrhills airport is used by Skydivers, Glider pilots, recreational pilots a flight school, hosts the traffic for several maintenance facilities.

I would like to respond to the issues that you seems to be faced with a possible skydiving operation at your airport. *I would also like to assure you that what you are going through sounds like pretty normal feelings regarding skydiving operations all across the country.

1. Fear of the ‘unknown’
2. Danger of collisions with skydivers
3. Skydiving and the economy

Fear of the unknown.

A lot of the issues come from fear and mostly fear of the unknown. *I first and foremost encourage you all to take a trip to an airport where a regular, busy skydiving operation exists and see for yourselves how skydiving and (any) other operations co-exist on the same airport/property. *There are many dropzones that co-exist in the USA with other operations. *

Most of the general population does not understand what we do. *If you spent an afternoon at a skydiving center, you would see the types of things we do, the attention to detail, the safety standards and the types of activities that we participate in. *Basically, we are a pretty normal bunch of people trying to make a living by offering an aviation service that few other people offer.

We follow the same Federal Aviation Regulations as everyone else, and go beyond that as members of the United States Parachute Association, who offers our training and licensing standards to our sport.

Danger of collision with skydivers.

A typical flight school may only operate 5-15 flights a day. *Many of those flights do not stay in the pattern of the airport. *Each flight might spend 10-20 minutes in the traffic pattern. *That is a total amount of time of only an hour or two in the sky at the airport out of a 10-12 hour day of possible flight activity. *That is a lot of down time when NOTHING is going on at the airport.

A fairly busy skydiving operation with a Cessna 182 or even a Caravan might do 20 flights in a day. *Each operation takes 30 minutes to climb to altitude, perhaps a 5 minute window when skydivers are actually in the air and then it is over and everyone is on the ground.

Certainly while the skydivers are in the airplane and the airplane is flying a 'normal' climbing pattern around the airport, with a pilot who is communicating with the other traffic in the area and even perhaps the nearest ATC center, I would state that 'danger' is non-existent.

Even if the skydivers jump and take 8 minutes from drop to actually being on the ground, in a day with 20 loads, that would be a total of 160 minutes, 2 1/2 hours of total of possible exposure time with skydivers in the air.

What I am trying to say is that even with a busy skydiving center, at any given time during a long day, when you look upward, there is NOTHING going on. *Short bursts of activity followed by relatively long waits between loads.

As well, Skydivers generally jump OVER an airport. *Traffic arriving and leaving an airport is generally flying in or out at a very shallow angle over a long flight path. *A skydiver at 1000' directly over the airport does not pose ANY hazard to an airplane that is on a 2 mile final approach at 1000'.

Skydiving pilots are more than used to being vigilant about radio communications when they operate. *They announce their intentions prior to launch, during the climb, prior to jumprun, after jumpers away and descending and jumpers on the ground. *If some airplane is in the area and NOT talking on a radio - well shame on them. *I realize that the regulations allow this, but it is simply not smart.

The chance the an errant pilot should wander into an airspace is not justification for stopping activities that are law-abiding and following the rules. No more than we would stop driving cars just because we fear someone might speed or otherwise pose a danger to other traffic.

Our typical series of communications at Skydive City in Zephyrhills - from the time we pick up a load until we are back on the ground - goes like this
123.07 Unicom - "Zephyrhills Traffic, Twin Otter taxing for runway 36 for skydiving ops, Zephyrhills"
123.07 Unicom - "Zephyrhills traffic, Twin Otter departing runway 36, climbing out to the north"
in less than 2 minutes we are at 2000' and we call Tampa ATC, but we still monitor Unicom all the way to altitude
135.50 Tampa Approach - "Tampa, Freefall One is back up, climbing through 2000' for 13500', 3 miles north of Zephyrhills"
Tampa *- "Freefall One, radar contact 3 miles north of Zephyrhills, advise 2 minutes prior to jump"
We receive traffic advisories from them all the way to altitude, as well, we advise them of traffic we see. Some 10-12 minutes later at 11500';
135.50 Tampa - "Tampa Freefall One is two minutes to drop"
then we advise on Unicom
123.07 Unicom - "Zephyrhills traffic, skydiving over Zephyrhills airport in 2 minutes from 13500' and below over the Southeast corner of the field, Skydiving in 2 minutes over Zephyrhills"
in 2 minutes we drop all the skydivers unless we have traffic, in which we may hold and go around as needed.
135.50 Tampa - "Tampa, Freefall One is jumpers away and descending to the east"
123.07 Unicom - "Zephyrhills traffic, jumpers away SE of the field, Twin Otter descending to the east of the field"
As we pass through 5000' on the way down, Tampa releases us
Tampa - "Freefall One, radar service terminated, change to advisory frequency is approved, see you soon"
at 2000' ( less than*5 minutes after drop) we are entering our 'opposite' pattern at Zephyrhills Airport
123.07 Unicom - "Zephyrhills traffic, Twin Otter on high left midfield for runway 18, Zephyrhills"
and again
123.07 Unicom - "Zephyrhills traffic, Twin Otter on short final for runway 18, Zephyrhills"

Once we are on the ground we also notify Unicom when we are clear the runway 18/36.

Why is this important? *On a busy day during one of our larger events, say at Christmas time, I will have 3-4 Twin Otters flying and we will repeat that same routine up to 70 times in a day. *Each load will have up to 22 skydivers on board. *There is an airplane dropping skydivers every 8-10 minutes from 8am to 6pm.

And we have a glider club actively operating on the same runway, departing in between our loads and landing gliders right through our our parachute landing area. Again, for the majority of time, there is NOTHING in the air, even on a busy day.

Now if we can do this successfully at Zephyrhills airport for the past 4 decades, surely you can manage 20 loads a day of 4-14 skydivers on each load.

I have been jumping since 1981 and I have only heard of a handful (less than 3 or 4) skydiver/airplane collisions EVER in the sport of skydiving. *But aircraft collide about 30 times each year in the USA. *I would argue that the*danger of a collision lies not with the skydivers. And banning the skydivers will not and has not reduced or removed the risk of any other aircraft collision.

Bottom line, is that the risk is there, like any other risk - but it is so minimal, it is barely measurable in reality.




Skydiving and the Economy

A skydiving operation attracts a different kind of person to the location where the skydiving is taking place.

Take the example again of a flight school at an airport. The flight student may be local or may not be. They will come, perhaps 5-6 students in a day. They stay for a couple of hours or half a day and they go home. They might buy a meal. They might buy gas. But they are not in your town for the ‘long haul’

Skydivers will travel to a dropzone to jump for a weekend or more. Those people will stay in hotels, they will eat three squares a day in your restaurants, they will buy gas and they will stay from Friday night to Sunday night in your town because they want to skydive and that is the recreational activity that they have chosen.

The average first jump student coming to do a tandem jump will be at the dropzone for half a day. They have travelled perhaps two hours to get there. They will buy food and gas and spend money in your town. Students who come to learn how to skydive are like the regular skydiver population, they will be there for extended periods of time to finish their training and jump as much as they can.

A dropzone will hire pilots, packers, instructors and office staff to manage the dropzone. Those people pay income taxes and local taxes as well. The have to eat and they have to have a roof over their heads.

In 1998, the City of Zephyrhills did an impact study on skydiving in their community and realized a $10,000,000/year industry contributing to the community.

We are such an integral part of the community that the City includes a parachute on their logo.

Even the FAA recognizes skydiving and parachuting activities as part of ‘normal activities’ at an airport

So How Do We Make All This Work?

Meet with the skydiving operations and the flight schools and anyone else that flies out of the airport.

Develop working procedures as far as traffic patterns, communications and runway usage for everyone concerned. It is fairly easy to separate the ‘traffic’ on the airport, both with distance and time. Do not be afraid of stepping outside of the ‘norm’, especially when it comes to traffic patterns.

At Zephyrhills, we fly a completely opposite pattern to all other traffic, and it is published and charted. The FAA did not request that. We, as tenants of the airport, sorted that out with each other and told the FAA that this was what we worked out. It’s been working for decades.

File NOTAMs for the activities that are going on. Petition the FAA to update their charts and ‘Green Books’ to show the activities for anyone flying into the area.
Establish communication protocols that keep all the pilots informed of what is going on and when. Our radio communications (above) is a good example of what works well. Announcing ‘take-off’, ‘2 minutes to drop’, ‘jumpers away’ and ‘jumpers on the ground’ makes 4 separate announcements in the span of a 15-20 minute window, on top of all other normal traffic pattern conversation.

Surely that would suffice for radio communications at ANY airport.

And finally, come out and watch some skydiving, you might get the bug to try it yourself.....

David ‘TK’ Hayes
President/GM
Skydive City Inc.
4241 Sky Dive Ln
Zephyrhills, FL 33542
813-783-9399 wk
813-598-6981 mobile