Pinocchio Chronicles: FAA-County Palomar Backflips

Background

For 8 years, the FAA paid for the 2018 SD County McClellan-Palomar Airport Master Plan (PMP) and EIR. The goal was simple. Decide if Palomar should grow over the next 20 years. The FAA and county told us they would support the chosen project.

In 2018, the county Board voted for an 800-foot runway extension and conversion from a Palomar B-II to D-III airport. After Citizens for a Friendly Airport (C4fa) won its lawsuit against the county, the Board in 2021 chose instead a 200-foot runway extension and keeping Palomar as a B-II airport. As did Palomar-host-city Carlsbad.

FAA & County Staff Undermining the Board Action

Since 2021, SD county staff and FAA have secretly been revising the Palomar Airport Layout Plan (ALP) to thwart the 2021 SD Superior Court ruling that county needs both County Board and Carlsbad permission to make Palomar a D-III airport to handle much larger aircraft. The draft ALP refers to an ultimate Palomar D-III classification, not B-II. C4fa has seen the draft ALP.

The ALP: The Congress Bible to Award Grant Funds

The FAA has a Palomar Congressional problem. For 50 years, the FAA failed to enforce FAA Grant FAAP 0801 Palomar conditions. County unsafely filled Palomar canyons with garbage 1000 feet from the runway, thus violating two FAA grant conditions. Extending the runway over the unstable, methane emitting fill is hugely expensive.

An astute congress member should ask the FAA an obvious question when county asks for runway extension monies: Why should Congress pay for an extraordinarily expensive Palomar runway extension when astronomical costs result from FAA mismanagement and SD County grant violations? Why is funding appropriate when Carlsbad has said it wishes to retain a B-II airport and when the County Board also chose the B-II alternative in the Palomar 20-year plan?

Don’t the other 3399 grant-compliant airports in the FAA national system deserve better?

Backflips & Addiction Therapy

Forever, the FAA has said locals decide their own airport fates. Why? Because the U.S. Constitution gives the 50 states, not the feds, local zoning authority.

But the FAA has a stealth plan to grow all airports, as addicting as any fentanyl drug dealer plan. Here is how the FAA plan rolls.

Step 1: Addict locals to FAA airport grants. Pay up to 90% of airport expansion projects.

Step 2: Behead Local Discretion. Once a local accepts grant monies, make the airport operate 20 more years.

Step 3: Set airport safety criteria for A, B, C, D, and E sized aircraft. Then ignore them. Build a B-II airport (Palomar) with 300-foot B-II Runway Safety Areas (RSAs). Then turn a blind eye to C and D aircraft using Palomar needing 1000-foot RSAs. Bar no aircraft. Issue no pilot safety violations. Actually CREATE safety hazards to justify a future, longer runway.

Step 4: Ignore the 20-Year Palomar PMP the FAA paid for and promised to use. Ignore the county Board action. Ignore the Carlsbad action.

The FAA channels actor Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men: “I (the FAA) have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very (air) freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.”

- Colonel Jessup.