The Charbonneau Villager
Page 13
December 2013
New Aurora Airport Arrival Route Benefits All
Positive Aurora Aviation Management group (PAAM) has been
working for quite some time with
Portland Federal Aviation Administration’s Traffic Control (aka
TRACON) Center on rerouting
aircraft traffic arriving from the
east into Aurora State Airport.
This new arrival routing will enhance safety and reduce noise, operating times and pollution. The
announcement of this new arrival
routing is particularly significant
in that it was achieved through the
diligent, combined work of the
aviation community during the
recently proclaimed (by Oregon’s
Governor Kitzhaber) Oregon Aviation Appreciation Month.
Up until now, Tracon has collected Aurora Airport flight arrivals from the east into a mass arrival system for the entire Portland
area. The current method brings
all this traffic in through a virtual
funnel east of Hood River, near
The Dalles, and directs them down
the Columbia River Gorge and on
into the busy Troutdale/Portland
International/Hillsboro Airport
airspace. Then, TRACON separates out the Aurora-bound traffic, vectoring it southward over
Portland, Lake Oswego, Tualatin,
Wilsonville and Charbonneau,
before reaching the Aurora Airport airspace. Whether prevailing
winds favor a north or south landing at Aurora, inbound Aurora aircraft traffic is directed along this
same crowded over-flight route.
After long coordination and
some hard work of both PAAM
and TRACON, the air traffic controllers have agreed to separate
traffic inbound from the east to
Aurora Airport before grouping
it in with the northern airspace
traffic. The new route will bring
the Aurora-bound traffic through
the “saddle” between Mt Hood
and Mt Jefferson. This brings
arriving traffic in from the east,
directly to the east side of Aurora airspace, rather than from
the north, avoiding over-flight of
Portland, Lake Oswego, Tualatin
and the central part of Wilsonville. Since this traffic is arriving
from the southwest, hopefully
most pilots will choose the faster
option of landing from the south,
thus avoiding overflights of Charbonneau. However, they will still
have the option of landing from
the north, depending on the wind
direction. “
"Nothing will completely
eliminate overlying Charbonneau, but this will reduce overflights," said Bruce Bennett ,
PAAM safety board director and
Aurora Aviation owner. “We will
continue to work to be a good
neighbor.”
Separating out the traffic increases safety by reducing air
traffic controller workloads. A
controller is only allowed to
manage a specific maximum
number of inbound aircraft. The
less a controller must manage at
once, the less the probability of a
mishap. The “decongestion” of
airspace directly results in safer
skies.
Aurora State Airport is the
third busiest airport in the State
of Oregon. A sizable amount of
pleasure and corporate aircraft
are based there. Also, due to better highway conditions, locations
of meetings, etc., arriving aircraft from other places around the
country choose Aurora as their
destination. Although newer and
technologically advanced aircraft
turbo-fan engines’ noise signatures are greatly reduced, aircraft
noise is still bothersome to various people. Separating out the
Aurora inbound traffic and bringing it in from the east will route
the aircraft over sparsely populated areas, thus reducing the noise
signature.
Tested over the past few days,
the TRACON found the routing
advantageous and acceptable.
From this point forward, controllers are directing the Aurorabound traffic along \