Tiny Arundel airport's takeoff beset by delays

Setbacks no stranger in struggle for success

Tipton Airport never saw this one coming.

The 347-acre airport at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County has grown accustomed to delays in its 13-year transition from a military airfield to a general aviation county airport.

It landed on, then was quickly removed from, the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of the nation's most hazardous sites. Then, when its board inched ahead on a much-delayed project to build new hangars, a rare plant was found in a drainage ditch and blocked the airport's way.

"Airport management is not an exercise in instant gratification," said David Almy, Tipton Airport Authority's spokesman and an executive at a Washington aviation trade group. "Many things that we do take years and years. Elephants have shorter gestation times."

But those roadblocks aside, no one could have predicted that the Federal Aviation Administration would close Tipton's airspace for nearly a month after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11. Or that when it reopened, it would be under so many restrictions that it would turn away many customers, costing the airport a lot of revenue.

Now, Tipton hobbles along. "We have taken a significant hit, both financial and market hit, as a result of the 11th," Almy said.

After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the FAA closed the airspace within 25 miles of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to general aviation. The same restrictions applied to airports in Boston and the New York area.

Because no one was flying, no one was buying fuel - one of Tipton's main revenue sources. As its airfield turned into a parking lot for Pipers and Cessnas, Tipton could only wait. Each day it was closed it lost $5,000, Almy said.

On Oct. 6, the FAA reduced the restricted zone from 25 miles to 18 miles in all three cities. Tipton, at 18.2 miles from National, barely squeaked in - though planes can't depart to the south. But the reprieve was only partial. The FAA will allow only fliers certified with instrument training and student pilots taking lessons to fly from airports within 25 miles of National. An FAA spokesman said she did not know when the restrictions would be lifted.

Instrument-trained pilots follow a flight plan and communicate with air traffic controllers. They know how to use navigation aids in inclement weather. Instrument certification takes the average pilot one to six months to obtain.

In contrast, recreational pilots fly under visual flight rules, navigating mostly by looking out the window and avoiding bad weather.

Almy, a visual-rules pilot, estimates that 20 percent of Tipton's pilots are visually trained. As a result, though Tipton is open, its fuel sales are about half what they were before the attacks in September. Even as the airport loses money, it is spending $35,000 on new security measures, including high-tech airport monitoring cameras and a security gate.

"We are in the process of recovering, but it's not a light switch," Almy said. "It's going to take some time."

Tipton knows all about things taking time.

In 1988, Congress ordered the Army to get rid of the airport as part of the Base Realignment and Closure Act. By the early 1990s, county officials were pushing for control of Tipton. But a transfer was delayed because, during a cleanup in 1995, contractors found thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance - likely from when Tipton was a munitions training ground and a landfill.

In 1998, the Army was poised to transfer the land to the county when Fort Meade - and Tipton - landed on the Superfund list. Sixteen months later, the EPA removed Tipton from the list and allowed the county to lease the property. It would take two more years for the deed transfer that officially clipped Tipton's ties to military control.

Now, Tipton has its own entrance - a dirt road off Route 198 - so that its customers no longer endure Fort Meade's strict security measures. Almy expects its permanent access ramp off Route 32 to be completed next month.

Among Tipton's biggest frustrations is the delay over the T-hangars - garagelike structures for small planes that the airport will lease for $375 a month. Plans to build the first 40 came to a halt late last year, when a rare plant - the spiky-thistled Juncus polycephalus - was found growing in a ditch on the site.

Because the plant was thought to have disappeared from the state decades ago, Tipton's board had no choice but to protect it. Tipton's new T-hangar site is in a floodplain, so the board is again reviewing its options, Almy said.

Even with all its headaches, Tipton is lucky. Three miles south along Route 198, Suburban Airport in Laurel remains closed. Suburban's flight school, Capitol Air, which flies out of both airports, moved its base recently to a trailer at Tipton. While both airports were shuttered, Capitol Air lost $40,000, said its operations manager, Mark Curl.

It loses more every day. Plane rentals, a big part of Capitol's business, are down, because so many pilots can't fly. And its fuel tanks at its Suburban sit idle.

Curl, a visually trained flier who considers receiving his license six years ago the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, said it's time for the government to lift the ban.