AOPA Action: Commercial airport security changes can squeeze GA

The pilot of a single-engine airplane lands at a small commercial-service airport and is cleared to taxi to the transient parking area on the public ramp. On arrival at parking, however, two surprises are waiting: The transient parking area has been downsized to a few tiedown spaces since the pilot’s previous visit—and a security guard is waiting to escort the arriving aviator and passengers to the fixed-base operation.

Why the changes?

A clue to the answers sits close by, where a regional airliner is boarding passengers. The new airline in town is flying 78-seat jets to a variety of destinations, and the airport is hopeful that the service will expand even more. Under Transportation Security Administration regulations, the airport has been required to upgrade its existing security measures to a complete, TSA-approved program because the new airline’s aircraft have “a passenger seating configuration of 61 or more seats.”

Along with restricting or relocating parking or access points, airport management may also be required to conduct security screening and issue identification badges to hundreds of employees and other personnel authorized to enter movement areas. That’s when the scenario can become tricky for transient pilots and their passengers. Transient pilots lack locally issued security credentials—a technicality that has prompted at least one airport, now coping with increased security obligations, to hire security guards to escort transient pilots and their passengers to and from secured portions of the airport, augmenting the fixed-base operator’s other security measures—and curtail general aviation parking near airline operations, citing a safety concern about jet blasts.

AOPA has responded to member reports of adverse effects of security changes at airports that are expanding their commercial service or intend to attract larger carriers. AOPA has opened discussions with airport administrations to ensure that access to airport facilities is not curtailed.

AOPA members can help the association work on their behalf by notifying AOPA ([email protected]) of changes they observe that are linked to security procedures at commercial-service airports, said Nobuyo Sakata, AOPA director of aviation security. “Transient pilots may observe changes in airport security procedures when they fly to relatively small commercial-service airports,” she said. “Especially if you become aware that an airport has announced increased or additional commercial service, you may notice changed security procedures at the GA ramp as well.”

Web: www.aopa.org/security-brief

AOPA’s Rudinger to serve on RTCA board

AOPA Vice President of Government Affairs Melissa Rudinger has been elected to the board of directors of RTCA, the private, not-for-profit association that works to establish aviation’s modernization standards by developing consensus among industry interests, in cooperation with the FAA.

“Melissa Rudinger has been a great asset at AOPA for more than 25 years and led a number of our most important initiatives,” said AOPA President Mark Baker, a former RTCA board member who also served on RTCA’s NextGen Advisory Committee from 2014 to 2018. “She knows the issues that matter to pilots and how to get things done in Washington, and she will be a strong voice for general aviation on the RTCA board as they work to make our skies even safer and more efficient.”

Rudinger is a commercial pilot with a lighter-than-air rating who has been in aviation for more than 30 years, has run a local airport business, and has received FAA Academy training in airspace design and analysis, air traffic management, terminal procedures development, and environmental policy. She is co-anchor of AOPA Live This Week.