| Seattle Council on Airport Affairs | |||||
| A Grassroots Organization Helping Communities, Government and Airports | |||||
|
|
|
| SCAA
has been in contact with Passur, the manufacture of the web based flight
track monitoring system that's in use at many airports across the country.
We wrote the following letter to Sea-Tac and received a response back several
months later from the Noise Abatement office saying they would try to include
money in their budget for such a system.
June 17th, 2002 Gina Marie Lindsey Dear Ms. Lindsey, In the interest of improving communications between Sea-Tac and the community, we urge the Airport to install a near-live display of regional air traffic on your website. Such systems can be found at websites for LAX, SFO, ATL, and numerous other major airports nationwide. The capability for the public to monitor (or review using playback features), the tracks and identification of local aircraft, provides an important tool for communicating which aircraft fly in a particular airspace and why. It demonstrates the Airport's continued goal of providing the best information possible to residential communities impacted by noise from Sea-Tac operations. It should also result in a significant reduction in the number of people contacting Sea-Tac requesting flight information. This should result in cost savings to the Airport offsetting the cost of the system. By allowing the public to know which airlines are responsible for the most bothersome flights, concerned individuals can contact the particular airline directly. This shifts some of the burden off Sea-Tac and the FAA. Such a system would provide increased accountability for the airlines and support your Fly Quiet program by encouraging airlines to indeed fly more quietly. Our research indicates the system is easy to install (2-3 weeks from go-ahead), relatively inexpensive ($10,000 installation + $2500/month), and connects directly to the appropriate website server. Consideration should be given to sharing the costs of such a system with other airports in the region, since the range of the system could easily cover all the major airfields in the Puget Sound region. More information is available at www.passur.com and a press release covering the LAX installation (www.lawa.org) is attached. We hope you will consider keeping Sea-Tac at the leading edge of technology and communications by installing such a system in the near future. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter. Sincerely, Mike Ranta, President SCAA cc: Mike Ehl, Manager, Sea-Tac Air Terminal |
|
|||||
© 1999 - 2002
Seattle Council on Airport Affairs — www.airportnoise.org —
Contact SCAA |