Norman Rogers Airport Expansion
“When in doubt, make sympathetic clucking noises” read the staff instructions for Customer Service at a Trade Show I once worked.
In my opinion, a few airport officials may have been making sympathetic clucking noises to residents and the Collins Bay Marina in a recent Whig story about airport expansion.
- “Traffic growth does not necessarily mean we’ll be impacting them more. It may be less.”
- “With a 6,000-foot runway, they can go to the Caribbean and almost as far as Mexico City. Cancun is well within the range. That’s what the additional 1,000 feet can do,”
- “The odd 737 is going to be important to our community, that’s why we’re doing this.”
- “Officials said they took 737s out of the new noise studies because so few will ever come to Kingston. They would be more episodic events. For the 15 seconds the aircraft is overhead, you’ll hear it.”
I wrote to a retired senior airline pilot, this extract from his reply sums up just about everything the locals fear:
If the increase in runway length allows aircraft to reach new distant destinations that they couldn’t reach off the shorter runway, then those take offs will be at max. RTOW (runway length against t/o weight and temp.) and will be on full power and much noisier (especially on the B737 which is a much noisier a/c than say the Airbus).
a. Nobody will fly jets from Kingston except for Christmas/March Break holidays. That's like six flights per year.
b. Air Canada will put Dash 8s on starting in July. That will double/triple the available seat numbers compared to the present Beechcraft 1900, and give adequate luggage space, so suitcases won't arrive by taxi days later.
c. Moncton expanded its airport in a similar project. It cost a lot more money than the optimistic estimates for Kingston. Prepare for sticker shock!
d. We have VIA rail to Toronto, with the Union-Pearson train. We have VIA to Dorval. Make that service better!
e. This project will destroy the Collins Bay Yacht Club.
f. This project will annoy the people living near the airport.
small pain long gain
The airfield was there many years ago ,so why would you build or look for a house with the knowledge of planes flying over head .
That is because you love planes and would put up with the noise ,just to see all the beautiful planes take off or land..no one will ever be happy but to fly out of Kingston and not have to drive to Ottawa or Toronto is a upgrade .. Go Kingston
Any idea what the final cost for the airport expansion is/was? Air Canada has announced the first scheduled flight of its Airbus A220-100. This plane lands at London City Airport that has a runway length of 4.900 ft (1494 metres)about the length of our old runway.