Centennial Airport Business Association Newsletter

Issue: # 2 April 2009
Dear Centennial Airport Business/Operator-
 
We are pleased to bring you the second edition of the Centennial Airport Business Association's Quarterly Newsletter.  As we have stated before CABA is committed to communicating to its current and prospective membership through alerts and newsletters like this one.  This type of crucial communication is central to the mission of CABA and we hope that you find the information within to be useful.
 Since our last newsletter the Board Trustees have voted to expand CABA's committee structure to include two new committees. The Rocky Mountain Metro Airport committee and the Schedulers and Dispatchers committee are new standing committees that will report to the Board.  Further detail about these new committees, their functions, goals, and chairpersons, can be found in further detail below in subsequent articles by Brittany Davies and Tiffany Steckel.
 
Additional communication efforts by CABA have taken place over the last several months.  We continue to improve the website and the membership only portion of the website is now active.  This new exclusive section will give CABA members access to committee forums, a membership directory, meeting minutes and other helpful tools.  Current members can access their username and password by contacting CABA directly for that information.
 
In January 2009, CABA held its first official membership meeting and networking event.  This event with keynote speaker Greg Feith was a tremendous success with over seventy guests in attendance.  Due to this and other networking efforts, CABA has grown its membership roster to over fifty members with a majority of the new membership represented at the corporate level.
 
This week CABA will host its second Membership Meeting and more importantly its first Annual Meeting required by our bylaws.  At this important meeting the CABA Board of Trustees will call on its voting membership to approve a slate of four new incoming board members.  We will also welcome Charlie Priester of Priester Aviation as our main speaker for this event. Charlie is an industry icon with a wealth of industry knowledge and insight.  He will be touching on a variety of operational control, legislative and perception issues facing our industry.  Additionally, Steve Hadley, our Regional NBAA Representative, will also be joining us and will spend a few minutes discussing some important industry issues.  The event will end with a networking/wine and cheese tasting event sponsored by Balestreri Vineyards.  This year's Annual Meeting and Membership Event will be held in the Wright Brothers Room located at the Control Tower, Wednesday, April 29th at 4 pm.  
 
As you can see, we've come a long way since CABA's re-establishment in April of 2008.  CABA is once again an important resource for its membership, a platform for discussing and advocating local and national industry issues, and a place for all of us to communicate and network with each other.  We've got a long way to go, but we've taken the first important steps of establishing a strong foundation.  We're excited for the upcoming year, with new board members comes new ideas and fresh blood to continue to expand and grow this association.  We are faced with an unprecedented time in our industries history in which we need to be consistently vigilant in protecting business aviation and our livelihood as we know it.  What we ask of you is to stay involved, communicate to us on what you think needs to be discussed, and continue to be proactive in promoting our industry. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Iver Retrum
President/Chairman
Centennial Airport Business Association
CABA Adds Schedulers & Dispatchers Committee
By Brittany Davies 
In recent weeks CABA successfully created a Schedulers and Dispatchers Committee. The committee's goals are to provide a supportive and educational resource for area schedulers and dispatchers along with a venue for networking amongst industry peers. 
 
The committee elected a chairperson and committee members, comprised of individuals from charter and business flight departments, and Centennial and Rocky Mountain Metro Airports.  Committee Chair, David Purvis, says of the recent committee formation "To know what local resources you have and to develop friendships with fellow schedulers and dispatchers is priceless.  We want to create a venue for S&D's where they can discuss current issues, learn from peers, and have a voice in the region and in the industry. This is a great opportunity for all of us and I am privileged to be a part of this group." 
 
While the committee is still in its infancy, there are a lot of exciting ideas on the table.  With the support of CABA and its members, we are sure to see great things from this committee, so stay tuned for updates on upcoming S&D meetings and events.
 

Rocky Mountain Metro Group Joins CABA as a Sub-Committee
By Tiffany Steckel 
 
The Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport is proud to announce that it has a representative committee within the Centennial Aviation Business Association (CABA).  We would like to extend a big "Thank You" to CABA for this important opportunity. By participating in this valuable association, our business affiliates will have leverage in our local aviation community, giving voice to many issues and concerns related to safety and operations or upcoming events in the aviation community.   

We have elected three volunteers to participate with the new CABA committee.  The chairman elect is Mike Turner with Clay Lacy Aviation.  The other two representatives are Malachi O'Neill with Mountain Aviation and Tiffany Steckel with Stevens Aviation.  All three of these Rocky Mountain Metro Airport representatives are very excited about their new role and will focus on encouraging more individuals and businesses to join CABA. 
 
Currently, the Rocky Mountain Metro Airport is in the first stages of the Airport Master Plan.  The long awaited anticipation of the tower relocation started in March 2009.  This project repositions the tower on the south side of the airport, just east of the water tanks.  Additionally, we have built an operations road that bends around to the south side of the airport.  Finally, beginning early this summer, our 6th and final phase of relocating taxiway A will be underway. 
 
The Rocky Mountain Regional Fly-in and Airshow on August 22nd-23rd is our next exciting 2009 event.  We would love to have our fellow aviation friends and family join us. Please contact us for more information by calling 303-271-4850.



Sharing the Centennial Flight Training Skies
A Detailed Commentary By Donovan DeVasher
 
Centennial Airport ("APA") is one of the busiest General Aviation airports in the United States. The Arapahoe County Airport Authority web-site states APA is 3rd busiest non-airline airport in the U.S., and the 25th busiest over-all (http://www.centennialairport.com/Airport-FAQ#Anchor2). A good percentage of the airport's traffic is generated from flight training activities which are active throughout the day, and into the night. A majority of flight schools at major GA airports around the country are relatively small, having less than a dozen aircraft. Compare this to one of four schools at our airport that has nearly 30 light piston aircraft.  A vast majority of these aircraft are in the air on any given weekend-most likely doing maneuvers in the Southeast and Southwest Designated Practice Areas, or transiting the airspace on their way to regional cross country destinations.
 
When considering the additional operations of just three other important operators' aircraft, in excess of sixty light piston airplanes available for flight training or rental on any given day is available at our airport. There are days when the local control tower radio becomes so congested that it is split into two discreet frequencies, one termed "Local One' and another, "Local Two", each controlling one of two parallel runways. While only one primary tower frequency is published on aeronautical charts (118.9), local and visiting pilots must know that there is a great likelihood on a fine clear afternoon that multiple tower frequencies will be in use. You should expect to be routed to a runway best suited for ATC's workload and traffic needs given your initial request.
 
I often hear grumbling from some pilots about the "tense" atmosphere that can exist on the weekend-when perhaps a short tempered controller may have quipped something akin to "xxx Foxtrot Tango, read back hold short of RWY 17 left at Bravo 8" followed by silence, then "XXX FOXTROT TANGO HOW DO YOU HEAR?"-finally followed by a timid pilot response..., "Ah, this is Fox Tango, we're over here on Bravo holding short of.... (mumble, mumble) ah, ah..." These are the days when I count down the minutes to a tower shift change, in anticipation of an afternoon phone call from one of my controller friends wanting to go have a beer after work to test my psycho-therapeutic skills... They ask me semi-joking, "how can it be that these people are allowed to fly airplanes"? I think they somehow assume I have the answer...I don't. 
 
The irony here of course is that most of the guys and gals upstairs are pilots too. Some in fact have advanced flight certificates, and even a few have turbine time (those that figured out that being a controller was a reasonably good tradeoff from waves of furlough's, reduced, or even erased retirements, weeks away from home, and a paycheck that would actually clear the bank-but that's another 'economic' story altogether). On top of that, a good percentage of the senior folks have worked at some of the busiest airports and airspaces in the world, like Chicago O'Hare, LAX, New York Center, and SOCAL-you name it. Naturally, as the suds continue to flow, the smiles broaden, and the comradery intensifies. We all send out a resounding "CHEERS" for we all remember that we are in this insanity together, and somehow, we continue to share a love for this aviation insanity for pretty much the same reasons. 
 
As we share stories, I might interject a reminder of what they already know deep down; that pilots, like controllers, merely act out what they have been taught by their instructors, or have observed when watching their peers, or read in one of 'those were the days in Nam' books, or worse, what they may dangerously assume is true without any empirical evidence. I remember an adage from my days spent in a graduate Aviation Psychology course: you shouldn't always blame the individual, but more often, we should blame their training, professional culture and sometimes, even the industry.
 
General Aviation tows a very narrow line between acts of individual freedom, and the respect and demand for collective compliance to shared rules. It's sort of like a democracy in that we all expect each other to participate in a shared system with the utmost respect for one-another's freewill.  But, we also equally demand that all of us show an unwavering dedication to personal responsibility that does not impinge upon others, made for the pursuit of intelligent enlightenment, truth and equality (deep breath here...) So-we need to remember that while the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) gives us extraordinary freedom it must then also have rules that protect us (the general public) from undue harm. We do need a hen house as it were. Thus, we must all remember that indeed, we are all in this together...that each and every one of us has an impact upon another's ability to go where they want, when they want, and how we might want to go about doing it. So, that said, let's talk about what we can do at Centennial Airport to enhance the safety, efficiency and fun flying experience for everyone.
 
The Centennial Airport Air-Traffic Control Tower has a published document titled "General Operating Tips" which briefly describes the ATC operational procedures that have been designed for KAPA which have been proven to be most effective given the kinds of traffic that utilize our airspace and airport. There are a number of unique differences given a typical Class D airport. Probably the most noticeable for transient pilots is the ATIS instruction to call Ground Control AFTER your run-up is complete for a tower controlled departure sequence. This effectively means you must call Ground Control at least twice, one for a taxi clearance, and one to advise ground control that you are ready for departure. Due to the heavy load of training traffic, and the desire to not impede the departure of turbine traffic (after all, they don't need a run-up-usually) ATC desires to sequence departures such that bottle-necks on the taxiway are minimized, speed separation on departure is enhanced and traffic pattern congestion is properly managed given the current load.
 
Unfortunately, it is a common experience for controllers to have to query pilots upon initial contact to confirm they have received the ATIS information. Why? Well, often pilots are too lazy to listen all the way through a long winded ATIS (some after all are painfully long) when they see each number of the HOBBS 'click', as the thought crosses their minds of the inverse relationship that event has to the thickness of their wallets. However, this is where the pilot is expected to have received the airport specific information that instructs us to "...contact ground when run-up is complete for sequence to tower." For those concerned about saving money on the ground (and the environment) you can call 303-799-6722 on your cell phone before engine start to receive KAPA ATIS. This is what I make my students do before we go out on a lesson, mostly because its safer (more heads-up time) and I have an opportunity to ask performance questions before the airplane is growling. I shake my head often when I see pilots sitting on line, gasoline fires burning for what seems like a century, head down, copying ATIS, with no idea who might be walking around that 6' meat grinder.
 
Ground Control will instruct the pilot where to go, and when to monitor tower (operative word...MONITOR) upon your call to instruct them that your run-up is complete. After which you will be told to hold position, or pull-up to the hold line of the assigned runway, if that is what they need at a given time. Ground control will be very specific about when to 'Monitor Tower'...and this means what it means, just monitor. Unlike other airports, Centennial will not accept your departure request if you initially call tower. Remember, ATIS already gave you everything you need to know. It is the ground controller who is responsible for sequencing each control strip to the tower controller.
 
A recent addition to these unique procedures is the "read back all hold short instructions VERBATIM". I've been to a number of national airports recently and more and more, I hear this statement on ATIS. What does verbatim mean...? Dictionary.net defines the word Verbatim \Ver*ba"tim\, adv. [LL., fr. L. verbum word.] Word for word; in the same words; verbally; as, to tell a story verbatim as another has related it. So, in effect, spit it back exactly how you heard it. E.g. "Cessna xxxFT, hold short of runway 17L at B8". You say....... Why? One simple reason, runway incursions are on the rise, and accident data suggests this is one of the single most deadly transgressions we can make as pilots. Additionally, the verbatim read back protects you and the controller from any misunderstanding and the legal implications this might have for both of you if something goes wrong.
 
Remember, controllers are on the 'hook' as much, if not more than you are. We think we have enough rules, you should see the 7110.65
(http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/Atc/) .. And, also remember, everything is recorded to tape. Tape doesn't lie.
Attached is the Operating Tips published by the Centennial Airport Air Traffic Control Tower. Think of it as recurrent training. I know most of you have probably read this at least once, but it's worth another review. Next CABA newsletter I'll be discussing the Centennial Airport practice areas and good operating techniques when flight training. In the meantime, think about this:
 
How is it possible that on a fine cloudless afternoon a group of ATP rated jet pilots (possessing multiple flight instructor certificates) in 172's flying a missing man formation almost suffered a mid-air collision with another unrelated aircraft transiting the adjacent airspace (while monitoring the practice area frequency, another air-to-air frequency, the tower frequency, and approach)? Ah...it really can happen to anyone... Until then, fly with your ears open, and your head on a swivel!   
 
Centennial Airport Operating Tips
CABA Newsletter Articles
CABA Adds Schedulers and Dispatchers Committee
Rocky Mountain Metro Committee
Sharing the Flight Training Skies
Helpful Links
 
 
Upcoming Meetings/Events 
April 29th, 2009
Wright Bros. Room
(4 pm- 6 pm)
CABA Annual Membership Meeting
Featuring Guest Speaker Charlie Priester and Balistreri Vineyards
 
 
June 13th & 14th, 2009  
25th Anniversary of Front Range Airport-Airshow 
 
 
June 10th, 2009
Signature Charity Golf Event- Black Bear Golf Course
 
 
June 21, 2009
CABA Welcomes the Women Racers of the Air Race Classic
 
 
CABA Mission Statement
"To foster and promote aviation and related business at and near Centennial Airport; to collectively address and respond to issues impacting Centennial Airport, including safety and operational effectiveness; to educate the general public about all aviation activities at the airport, and to preserve the airport and related businesses as valuable economic assets to the community at large."
CABA Board of Trustees 
Iver Retrum
(Chairman)
  
Brittany Davies
(Secretary and Treasurer)
 
Donovan DeVasher 
John Furstenberg 
 Craig Johnston
Gene Langfeldt
Bill Payne
Craig Teasdale
Current CABA Sponsors
 
Centennial Airport Logo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SolarControl
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Centennial Airport Business Association | 8001 South InterPort Boulevard | Suite 300 | Englewood | CO | 8112