Opinion ID: 1192958
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Existing Panama City Airport

Text: The existing Panama City Airport occupies 713 acres on the Florida panhandle. The northwest end of the primary runway abuts the open waters of Goose Bayou, which is part of a system of bays extending inland into Bay County. The remainder of the airport is surrounded by roads and commercial and residential development. Any expansion of the existing airport, therefore, would entail re-routing highways, displacing homes, filling in the bay waters of Goose Bayou, or some combination thereof. Expansion of the existing airport is necessary to comply with the FAA's revised Runway Safety Area standards. The runway safety area serves to reduce the risk of injury to passengers and damage to property in the event an aircraft undershoots, overshoots, or deviates from a taxiway or runway. 65 Fed.Reg. 38,636, 38,649 (June 21, 2000). By December 31, 2015, all airports receiving federal funding must conform to revised Runway Safety Area standards, see 2006 Transportation Appropriations Act, Pub.L. No. 109-115, tit. I, 119 Stat. 2396, 2401 (2005); 14 C.F.R. § 139.309, by (1) enlarging the safety area to the requisite dimensions, (2) deploying an Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS), [1] or (3) declaring the runway to be a shorter length, see FAA, Airport Design, Advisory Circular No. 150/5300-13 at 21, 25-26 & app. 14 (Sept. 29, 1989), available at www.faa.gov (follow Advisory Circulars hyperlink). These FAA standards provide that the runway safety area should extend 1,000 feet beyond the runway's end. See id. at 26-1 (table 3-3): see also Town of Stratford v. FAA, 285 F.3d 84, 86 (D.C.Cir. 2002) (describing methodology for calculating runway safety area). An airport that deploys EMAS, however, may require less than 1,000 feet of runway safety area beyond the runway's end to comply with FAA standards. See FAA, Engineered Materials Arresting Systems (EMAS) for Aircraft Overruns, Advisory Circular No. 150/5220-22A at 1 (Sept. 30, 2005), available at www.faa.gov (follow Advisory Circulars hyperlink). The primary runway at the Panama City Airport is 6,304 feet long, and the secondary crosswind runway is 4,888 feet long. Neither runway complies with the FAA's revised Runway Safety Area standards. To be in compliance, the airport would need to extend the safety area an additional 941 feet beyond the Goose Bayou end of the primary runway. The runway safety area at the southeast end of the primary runway meets an antenna at 445 feet, an airport perimeter road at 678 feet, and State Road 390 at 847 feet. Each of these barriers prevents extension of the safety area to an uninterrupted 1,000 feet beyond the runway's end. The airport's 6,304-foot primary runway is also too short for larger commercial aircraft. The FAA determined that a 6,800-foot runway would be necessary to accommodate the regional and narrow-body jets that could be expected to serve the airport through 2018. The Sponsor, however, wishes to expand the runway to receive wide-bodied aircraft arriving non-stop from overseas. To serve such larger aircraft, the Sponsor determined that it would need to expand the existing primary runway to 8,400 feet. See Intervener's Br. at 5-6. Extending the runway either to 6,800 or to 8,400 feet would run into the obstacles discussed above: established homes, businesses, roads, and Goose Bayou.