The Issue

For more than a decade there has been an effort to allow bigger planes to land at Aspen Airport. Both the County and the FAA want this outcome, but for different reasons, and each claims the other is driving it, though that’s hardly relevant.

What is relevant is that allowing bigger planes at ASE would require changing the current airfield layout and losing the 95-foot wingspan limit currently in place. The push for bigger planes has led to an FAA-encouraged airfield redesign (or Airport Layout Plan) that would overturn the 1995 voter rejection of bigger planes at ASE. It would also rescind the Modification of Standard that, for a quarter of a century, has helped keep Aspen Airport safe and our economy thriving.

The issue is not about restoring the past but protecting our future, because the bigger planes an ASE airfield expansion would accommodate from its first day of operations would also bring increased pollution, noise, and crowding to our home.

Interestingly, neither the majority of the Pitkin County public nor the commercial airlines are asking for bigger planes at ASE. Yet the push for a costly airfield expansion has persisted, and the County has spent tens of thousands of dollars each month on advertising, public relations, and lobbying to promote the supposed necessity of expansion. By Colorado law, such public funding must now cease. However, all five BOCC members, five members of the Airport Advisory Board, and one member of the County’s Financial Advisory Board have signed on as private citizens to support a new influence organization (airportcoalition.com) to continue the campaign promoting expansion. We can only hope for transparency.

Aspen Fly Right was established as an educational nonprofit organization specifically to examine and explain this issue so the people of Pitkin County can make a fact-based decision about our airport and its impact on our quality of life.