Airport Snow Removal Equipment

By Ken Smith

The historicity of airport maintenance equipment is a rather dull topic unless one lives in a rural community where transportation is highly dependent upon allowable usage of such items. This is particularly relevant in some airport communities where equipment was originally purchased with federal airport trust funds, then, for all practical purposes, removed from any real public benefit.

Having spent much of my professional background within the air carrier industry and then having fulfilled almost 23 years of public servitude with the Alaska Division of Aviation and then the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) I was witness to the evolvement of a program. This is the program under which most airport maintenance and rescue equipment in Alaska is purchased. True, I have been retired for some years now so pertinent policy and procedure may have changed somewhat, but I doubt it.

By the early 1970s Congress was fed up with its members continually soliciting allocations for airport improvements within their states. As continues today, in many other aspects of federal funding, these “pork” projects were distributed unequally across the nation. As a remedy, Congress developed an airport improvement trust fund program similar to that used for the federal highway system. Trust fund money is granted to an airport under a matching formula, which is highly disproportionate in favor of the airport. For example, the airport pays only 6% in some cases, while the federal contribution is 94%. The revenue source for this fund comes from hidden taxes in every airline ticket one purchases. In addition, other taxes such as gateway fees and taxes on revenues generated with aircraft having 6000 pounds or more gross weight also go into the kitty.

Every so many years Congress revisits this act, often modifies it, and usually gives the resulting program a new title. The first as I recall was the “ADAP” program for, Airport Development Aid Program.

Initially, use of such funds was very strictly controlled and limited to capital improvements only, such as creation or improvement of runways, ramps, taxiways, etc. or for terminal construction. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was selected to administer this program. They do so utilizing rules and procedure where funds are administered to US airports under a classic bureaucratic complex and convoluted apportionment process.

At the inception of the program the word was that it was going to be absolutely taboo for any funds to be used for ongoing operational expenses associated with airports or any other aspect of aviation. Today, things have changed.

With respect to equipment on airports, originally these funds were not authorized for such proposes. Slowly, amendments were made. Crash Fire Rescue equipment was the first to be authorized. Then the State of Alaska requested and received authority to purchase snow removal equipment. Hundreds of various items of snow removal equipment were purchased for use at many Alaska airports. Most of this equipment had the functional capacity to be used for purposes other than snow removal, such as dozers, dump trucks with belly blades or graders.

The great majority of rural airports in Alaska are gravel surfaced and not paved. A hue and cry soon erupted over the prohibition against using a village’s sole piece of maintenance equipment, such as a grader, from grading the local gravel runway during the summer. Alaska’s congressional delegation applied pressure and the FAA responded by changing rules allowing “snow removal equipment” use on gravel. Additional and pragmatic accommodations were also to be made.

One of these being elimination of the requirement that this equipment be relegated to use on the airport only. Many communities have village to airport roads. Soon it became permissible to use such equipment for local road maintenance as well.

When an airport receives trust fund monies it enters into a contract with the federal government. Numerous requirements are imposed upon the airport as a result. For instance, when a runway is constructed the airport is required to maintain and keep the runway open for public use for a period of twenty years. Say, this runway cost the trust fund one million dollars and the airport decided to close the runway after ten years. The airport would owe the trust fund $500,000 for the ten years not fulfilled. After twenty years the airport could close the runway with no penalty. As far as equipment items go, the obligation period is only ten years.

From time to time one hears from either a state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities employee or an FAA Airports Division employee that airport equipment cannot be used on local roads. During my tenure with the department these utterances usually occurred for one or two reasons: Ignorance or a desire on an employees part to shut an inquisitor up since the employee didn’t want the equipment to be used off the airport, for whatever reason.

Like I stipulated initially, things may have changed since I left public service. However, at the time I retired we had been maintaining almost 130 village airports in Alaska and it was common procedure to utilize airport maintenance equipment on local roads. My numerous assignments and responsibilities with the department over the years almost always involved aviation, therefore I was generally prejudiced toward the airplane related side of things. As a result I became rather chagrined with the FAA’s continued acquiescence to the broad use of airport funds. Shortly before I left I witnessed a worse case scenario.

The airport at Goose Bay across Knik Arm from Anchorage had used airport trust funds for a maintenance building and a grader. Our Matanuska and Susitna District had all but given up maintaining Goose Bay although the obligation period was still well within ten years. They had even moved the grader up to Palmer. Someone ratted this situation out to the FAA and they undertook an investigation. I figured we would get a rather sound spanking over this. Imagine my surprise as I sat in the Regional Director’s office and heard them explain that this particular practice was A-okay as far as the FAA was concerned.

What about the grader at the McCarthy Airport? In my opinion it is okay to use it to maintain the road to Kennecott, to the Nizina, to the footbridge and all the way to Chitina for that matter. Besides, isn’t the ten year obligation period up or almost up?

We sent Ken’s story to Joe Junker, who is the Tazlina maintenance chief for the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF). Joe said he didn’t think that he could take the airport equipment off the airport, but that if he had his “druthers” he would replace it with older equipment as it has been very little used. Joe said he would forward the article to his superiors in Fairbanks and we got this response from Clark Milne, who is the Maintenance Engineer for DOT&PF’s Northern Region.

I am writing you to aid/support Joe Junker in responding for the Northern Region of ADOT&PF about the opinions and “understandings” you’ve cited in the tentative news story you sent us on Wednesday.

Unfortunately we can’t agree with you on at least two of the key precepts you’ve stated, which led to your punchline ending, “In my opinion it is okay to use it to maintain the road to Kennecott, to the Nizina, to the footbridge and all the way to Chitina for that matter.”

We contend that it is standing policy, and good sound policy, to continue to constrain the use of FAA-funded AIP equipment solely to work on airport property, and — in several remote circumstances — ONLY the airport access road to the town/village being served by the airport, to facilitate year-round access to the airport. (This is authorized by the FAA Alaska) We maintain a stretch of “airport road” at a dozen or two of our 103 NR airports. In every case the only off-airport road that we maintain is the direct route from the airport to the population center, generally the US Post Office location. And in each of those cases there is no other State or municipal equipment available to provide an alternative to using the DOT’s airport grader. At most of our remote locations we don’t maintain anything off the airport at all because there is usually a workable alternative.

With regard to the ten-year grant obligation period, you are correct that both the loader and grader at McCarthy Airport are beyond ten years old, but this fact doesn’t change the underlying theory stated above.

We do not, and will not, authorize Sam (our Chitina foreman) or his operators to take the airport grader off of the airport because the DOT’s road-funded graders can access McCarthy via Keith Rowland’s bridge and do the necessary, periodic road work that way instead.

Clark Milne, PE

Northern Region, ADOT&PF

Maintenance Engineer

(907) 451-5285

So there you have it. Although there is a quarter-million dollars of almost unused equipment sitting at the McCarthy Airport, and although the ten year grant period is up, it cannot be used to do anything other than remove snow from the runway. Instead, older equipment must be moved 120 miles and over a toll bridge to maintain the state’s roads on the east side of the Kennicott River. The reason? Because it is “policy.”