Editorial: Big answer needed for little planes

Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | 8:50 a.m.

Sky Haven Airport opened 62 years ago in an open area six miles northwest of downtown Las Vegas. Today it's the North Las Vegas Airport, second-busiest airport in the state, whose surroundings are also a hub of activity. Home to small planes used by government agencies, leisure pilots, commuters, and businesses, the airport this year will have about 250,000 takeoffs and landings. Since 1990 Clark County, which manages the airport, has spent some $40 million improving it. This year a new runway is scheduled for completion, $6 million will be spent to build more private hangars and development of 77 acres will begin on the airport's east side.

Coinciding with the airport's growth is nonstop urban growth. The airport's surrounding roads -- Cheyenne and Simmons avenues, Rancho Drive and Decatur Boulevard -- are laden with residential and commercial development, as are the rest of North Las Vegas and northwest Las Vegas. Also growing are airplane accident statistics that are making many neighbors of the airport nervous. Paul Von Rueden, president of the Northwest Area Residents Association, told Las Vegas Sun reporter Timothy Pratt last week that growing neighborhoods and growing numbers of flights overhead are a bad mix.

There have been 21 crashes involving flights originating at North Las Vegas Airport since 1999. Eight of them occurred last year. Two of them happened last week. No one on the ground has yet been injured, but there have been close calls. The accidents and noise levels associated with the airport motivated state Sen. Raymond Shaffer, R-North Las Vegas, to introduce a bill in the Legislature aimed at curtailing the airport's activity.

The bill is understandable but strikes us as one-dimensional, a solution not accompanied by any answers to the problems it would create for users of the airport. The scope of the problem warrants a formal study, one that would look ahead 10 years and have the benefit of expert analysis from the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and local planners.