Ruling will result in new Grand Canyon tour routes

Friday, Sept. 11, 1998 | 11:11 a.m.

A court ruling upholding noise-restriction laws at the Grand Canyon sets the stage for route decisions that could affect Southern Nevada's air tour industry.

Tour operators say the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Washington last week upholding laws to restore natural quiet to the national park won't immediately affect flights, but it allows federal agencies to complete new tour routes prohibiting planes from 87 percent of the canyon.

Proposed routes have been drawn, but won't take effect until January.

Four groups -- the Grand Canyon Air Tour Coalition, the Clark County Department of Aviation, Arizona's Hualapai Indian Tribe and the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental organization based in Flagstaff, Ariz. -- sued the Federal Aviation Administration on different grounds and all four suits were rejected by the three-member appellate panel.

"We'll have to adopt a wait-and-see policy on this," said Jim Petty, who owns Air Vegas Airlines, a tour operator that flies from Henderson Executive Airport. "At least the court has left the door open for further judicial challenges if we don't think the routes are adequate."

Eagle Canyon Airlines chief Cliff Evarts said the ruling doesn't have an immediate impact on the $380-million-a-year industry. But it but could.

"The reality is we don't know yet how it will affect the air tour industry," Evarts said.

His company recently acquired Eagle Canyon Airlines, the largest Grand Canyon tour operator.

Evarts said he hopes that when final flight path rules are drafted, the government will consider allowing preferential routes for planes with quiet engines. He said bans on flights would have a major economic impact on Southern Nevada, since 42 percent of international visitors to Las Vegas go on to visit the Grand Canyon, many of them by air.

The economic issues are what Clark County focused on in its suit.

"We have a significant amount of air tour operations from three airports," said Jacob Snow, an assistant director of aviation at McCarran. "It's a primary revenue source at North Las Vegas and Henderson."

Snow said the county is attempting to take route negotiations directly to the tribe and the environmentalists to give tour operators scenic routes. But Snow admitted that the environmentalists' goal is to keep tour flights out of park airspace.

The Grand Canyon Trust sued because members felt the noise restrictions weren't strict enough.

"If there were winners or losers, the government won," said Tom Robinson, the Grand Canyon Trust's director of conservation policy. "The industry got really roughed up for mischaracterizing the rules.

"The court agreed with us that the agencies (FAA and National Park Service) have been very tardy, but they disagreed that the delay has been unreasonable," Robinson said. "But I see no opportunity for the industry to make any more challenges."

The Hualapais, whose reservation is southwest of the Grand Canyon and closer to airspace popular with Southern Nevada fliers, sued over routes, but the court rejected the claim because the routes aren't final.

Jim Santini, legislative counsel for the U.S. Air Tour Association, which has been working to make rules specific to Grand Canyon flights, said he wasn't surprised by the ruling, since appeals courts often come out on the side of government agencies.

"There's a natural disposition of the federal courts to interpret any ambiguity in favor of the federal government agency proposing the regulation," Santini said. "There's a built-in bias, an inherent deference to the federal agency."

Santini said his office has been working with an FAA and National Park Service task force to draft regulations pertaining to tours.

Chris Cole, an attorney who represented the air tour coalition, said the legislation's definition of natural quiet -- 3 decibels above background noise in 50 percent of the park, 75 percent of the time -- was inconsistent with the intent of the law.

Cole said the air tour industry conforms to some rules that already have been drawn regarding hours of operation and the number of flights that can be flown. The rules say operators can't increase the number of flights they have and they must operate between sunrise and sunset.