More big jets may use Grant airport

The Air Force wants to send more big jets into the sky over Moses Lake and use its airport for takeoffs and landings.

Drivers along Interstate 90 are sometimes surprised by the sight of large jets circling overhead or seeming to come in for a landing in the small Eastern Washington city.

Boeing 747 jetliners that belong to Japan Air Lines use the Grant County Airport to practice thousands of takeoffs and landings with their crews each year, and Boeing sometimes sends some of its other jetliners over for training as well. McChord Air Force Base uses the airport for practice for its C-17s, the military’s largest cargo plane.

That works so well that the Air Mobility Command wants to use Grant County Airport as its “Interim Western United States Landing Zone” for two C-17 bases in California. The Air Force wants to build a permanent training facility in California eventually, but in the meantime wants to route training missions from Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base to Moses Lake.

The Air Force’s draft environmental assessment says this would not cause any significant impacts on the airport. It would result in slightly fewer than two extra aircraft per day using the airport, said Doug Allbright, who is in charge of preparing the report.

The Air Force has received no objections from any of the federal or state agencies that reviewed the report, said Lt. Col. Andree Swanson of Air Mobility Command.

The Port of Moses Lake, which operates the airport, is still reviewing the plan and has yet to weigh in on it. But Craig Baldwin, the port’s executive manager, notes that Grant County Airport used to be Larson Air Force Base. When it was given to the port district decades ago, it was with the condition that the military could continue to use it, he said.

Other military planes use the base, and at this point Baldwin said he doesn’t see a significant impact.

But at least one resident does. Pat Palmerton, who lives near the airport in the pattern that the C-17s will use to practice short landings and takeoffs, said he’s worried about the extra noise.

While the Air Force may be talking about only two extra planes per day, those planes will apparently be doing multiple landings and takeoffs, called touch-and-go operations. The draft assessment calls for nearly 13,000 extra “operations” per year. Each time a plane takes off or lands is a single operation, and each plane may make as many as 10 landings and takeoffs while it’s in the area.

“This is not an insignificant increase,” Palmerton said.

He’s trying to get others in the flight path to write in their objections before the comment period closes at the end of this month but admits “we’re pretty darn late on this, to be honest with you.”

If the Air Force approves the plan, the extra planes would start making their flights later this year and continue at least through 2009.