Sometime this Spring, the FAA Great Lakes Air Traffic Control Administrator Rebecca MacPherson notified MSP that Converging Runway Operations (CRO) management was being changed for safety reasons: Runway 35 arrivals (NW flow) will be “On Demand.” Also sometime this Spring, MAC re-organized, creating a new division, Strategy and Stakeholder Engagement. MSP was expanded not by adding a new runway, but by mostly abandoning use of the cross-wind runway (R4-22) and constructing a one-way runway (R17-35). 

The public health and safety of flight operations at MSP has always been associated with peak-use hours. Flight capacity is planned and forecast for twenty years in the Long-Term plan, passengers up to about 50,000 per day, and in about 20 realistic hours/day, 2,500 per hout. But if you plan your airport for 5,000 passengers per hour, it will not be as safe or affordable and fewer passengers are likely.

How can that obvious and vital point best be raised?  Probably not by the new 4-step, 18-month process beginning with a Stakeholders Advisory Panel (See related News Post).

We need your help to clarify our goals and your advice on how to effectively attain them.  Please let us know your thoughts and what you are willing and able to do.

Thanks,

SMAAC Board of Directors