Gainesville Sun - September 1, 2001
By JIM MONEYHUN

Jim Moneyhun is a former president of the Gainesville Pilot's Association.

This is in response to The Sun's editorial (Aug. 21) regarding the Gainesville airport.

Did the firing of airport director Gene Clerkin represent a shift in power toward the general aviation side of the Gainesville Regional Airport?

No, the power shift was toward those who understood the dynamics of a viable airport and away from the popularity seekers who rubber-stamped whatever the airport administrator wished.

Major airlines pulled back into larger hubs? No, that's the excuse repeated by the airport authority until most believed it. In fact, there are still a few airport workers who remember Delta management telling everyone at the airport that if the authority raised the landing fees by 82 percent, they would pull out their jets.

Ten days after the authority so voted, Delta announced its pullout. Landing fees are based on weight, and the little replacement propeller-driven airplanes weighed less than the fuel in the jets.

Local pilots thought there was too much investment on the commercial side?

No, the problem was that the empire building by the airport management more than tripled the operating costs of the airport personnel, and capital investment in such niceties as a doubled baggage area, which increased operating costs, were obviously not needed to bring in more flights. Just the opposite occurred.

Authority members were engaged in petty squabbling?

No, even The Sun posted an editorial complaint against the chair of the authority who seemed to not recognize the First Amendment's freedom of the press.

The authority has been an embarrassment to the community? No, its members embarrass themselves, and of the many examples, outstanding is the vote by an authority member from the Chamber of Commerce to terminate a lease at the recommendation of the administration, only to find out that this action had helped put 15 employees out of work!

A strong competitor in this dumb-dumber contest is the rumination by the authority chair that the airport might be moved closer to Ocala, ignoring the fact that 80 percent of the Ocala passengers are leisure travelers with plenty of time to travel to Orlando for cheap fares, and the fact that the authority regularly obligates itself upon receipt of federal funds to continue the airport in operation for the next 20 years, failing which the city would be obliged to pay back enormous funds to the federal government.

Should the city of Gainesville appoint members of the authority? No, historically the voters have elected city commissioners who have little understanding of how to run a major business at a profit, and their choices of authority members have been too political, and insufficiently businesslike.

In the past, they have failed to install members who have built airports or who are members of the Gainesville Pilot's Association, instead packing the authority with real estate ladies and insurance salesmen who seem primarily interested in the attendant publicity for their own businesses. That doesn't work.

The airport is a major business, and should be run in a way that makes the routes profitable for the airlines at a low cost to the passengers, that being the only way Gainesville will get improved air service.

See September 1, 2001 issue of Gainesville Sun for original article.