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Mesa, AZ residents have turned to the Web to fight a local flight school
At issue are noise and safety concerns that revolve around Sabena Airline Training Center, the largest international pilot training school in the country and it has pitted Mesa residents who live around Falcon Field Airport (KFFZ) against airport businesses. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already lifted the airport circuit height by two-hundred feet in an effort to alleviate the debate (see Noise reduction, but frustration remains at Mesa's Falcon Field Airport) but the effort has done little to calm the rhetoric.
The city of Mesa has indicated it might consider limiting Sabena's operations, while concerned residents have started a Web site www.keepfalconfieldsafe.com in an effort to shackle the school's activities.
Airport businesses, however, say they'll have none of it.
Several business owners say they'll fight any move to limit the school's operation primarily because of the money it brings in. They point to the millions of dollars in revenue, from fuel sales to housing, as proof that a solution must be found other than moving the school or limiting it's business.
In the center of this dirt-devil, are the local pilots who long for the days when they could land and depart without having to wait in line to take off, or to suffer scrutiny from their neighbors, the FAA, the city, and now, the national media. Some write comments to the local media, or post blogs on www.examiner.com.
In 2006 there were nearly 250,000 take offs and landing at Falcon Field. In 2008, a year after Sabena arrived, those numbers shot to 320,000.
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