Column: Hawaii fails to support aviation, airports

Hawaii has a love-hate relationship with aviation and it is understandable. We love that aviation brings approximately 20.7% of Hawaii’s GDP and 208,349 jobs — 22.8% share of Hawaii jobs — to the Hawaii economy and feeds our visitor industry.

We also love that we can hop on an aircraft and visit the mainland (think Vegas) or the outer islands. We are also thankful that general aviation provides early tsunami warning, medical airlift and flight training to our local youth without having to spend “big bucks” at mainland schools.

Sometimes we are also frustrated with increased aircraft noise over our houses and aircraft crashing into our neighborhoods.

You would think with all this, we would have the full support of our state government to solve our problems, but this is not true. Here are a few examples where the Hawaii Airports Division is failing Hawaii and driving aviation out of this state:

>> State airport leaders are not working with federal, industry and civilian counterparts to address the noise/accident concerns.

>> Dillingham Airport is scheduled to be closed, short of the U.S. Army lease agreement time frame. This will cause the loss of over 130 jobs, $12 million economic loss to Oahu’s North Shore and major loss of tourist attractions. It also causes the taxpayers to possibly pay the remaining Federal Aviation Administration Grant obligation.

>> Several state-managed airports have significant safety problems that the state has made little or no effort to fix. For example, Kalaupapa Airport still does not have an ATC radio or weather reporting radio for commercial (or private) aviation use (think of how we lost the director of health in a 2013 crash). Several of our airports do not have the survey the state must do to ensure safe navigation pilots must have to approach the airports at night or in poor weather.

Many of our airports also have missing or incorrect airport signs and markings needed by pilots to navigate around the airport.

>> The state has abused the use of FAA Grant monies to improve our airports that Hawaii taxpayers have, or will have, to pay back to the FAA.

>> The state policy of offering only a month lease for renting state airport-managed facilities leads to instability for aviation-related small businesses. The other policy of offering only commercial long-term leases to private users of the airport facilities is overly restrictive. And if you do secure a month-to-month lease at a state airport and then terminate the lease, it may take more than three months to get your sizable deposit return, if you’re lucky.

>> The poor condition of general aviation (GA) leased state facilities and the continuous rent increases that are determined only by comparison to high-density local commercial warehousing have led to significant hangar vacancies. In the past there had been a waiting list and more revenue for the state. Add to that the state policy of making hangar users share equally in the airport electric utility bill, regardless of consumption and paying state property tax on state-leased facilities, and you have empty hangars.

>> The state-planned elimination of GA facilities at several airports without an available immediate replacement is unconscionable.

It is time that we have professional aviation personnel leading our state Airports Division. There is no one in the senior leadership who has aviation industry experience. To my knowledge, there is only one person in the division who is a pilot but his most recent experience is more than 30 years ago.

The state has a lawyer leading the Attorney General’s Office, a doctor leading the Health Department and a seasoned conservationist leading Land and Natural Resources. We need the same caliber leadership and experience at the state airports.

Rob Moore is former president of the General Aviation Council of Hawaii and an FAA-recognized master pilot.