A bitter exchange about engine run ups
I am sitting at the IYC and for 20 minutes there has been a plane
running its engines at full speed. The time is 4:50 pm.
This must be stopped.
Ron Kobrick
Commodore
Sent from my BlackBerry(r) wireless device
Hi Commodore
Thanks for the email. I checked into it, although the answer may not
satisfy you. Post 9am on the weekend is a key thing we watch for.
Security says the plane was in the designated location for maintenance
runups.
I'm going to make dinner now.
Cheers (Mark McQueen)
Your volunteer TPA Chairman
Commodore
Further to my email of yesterday, security logged an engine run-up by
C-GLQM at the bottom of runway 33 near the fuel farm; a designated
location for such things. The run-up started at 16:46 hrs and went on
until 16:57 hrs.
Mark McQueen
President & CEO
Wellington Financial LP
The noise at our club was so loud that you literally could not speak to somebody beside you ....
This is on a weekend ....
No it is not acceptable ...
Why did it have to go on for 20 minutes?
Ron Kobrick
Commodore Ron
According to the written report of uniformed security, it was 11 minutes not 20. I cannot account for the difference between these two figures. If this was the only runup of the day, 11 minutes represent just a minute percentage (1.1%) of the 990 minutes that the airport operates each day.
Like boats, aircraft require maintenance. I am advised that given the 7 day a week nature of a commerial airline, there are times when critical maintenance must be performed on a weekend. Delaying such maintenance until a weekday (when the yacht clubs and concert bandshells on the Island are quieter) might impair the safe operation of these aircraft. Or require flight cancellations, which would inconvenience hundreds of passengers. For sailors actually at sail and using their boats on the lake, I expect they hear nothing.
I'm not sure what else I can say. We can't ask TCCA users to cancel weekend maintenance during the summer to accomodate post-sail social activities at private yacht clubs. We be accused, again, by Councillor Vaughan of catering to the elite. Our goal is to mitigate impact, and several of the Noise Management Group's recommendations deal with infrastructure that will hopefully defeat some of these runup sounds.
--------------------------
Mark McQueen, From Wellington Financial LP
via my RIM
Mark,
I have been reviewing the correspondence between you and members of my community with growing alarm, culminating in the exchange this weekend between you and the Commodore of the Island Yacht Club. I take great offence to the arrogant, dismissive, and needlessly combative approach, which is entirely unbecoming of an appointed chair of a public board.
I particularly find the assertion that the engine noise run up occurred for only 1% of the airport's operations that day entirely missing the point of the community's concerns about noise. Using this logic, a complaint to the Human Rights Commission would be dismissed because an offensive incident occurred only once, which is only a fraction of a percent of a person's lifetime. These noise intrusions are a frequent occurrence that continually impact the lives of people who live, work, and recreate in the area, and these people should not be told to simply grin and bear it since, in the grand scheme of things, it is a small portion of their lives.
I am well aware of the TPA's noise mitigation work; however, this work would have considerably more credence and legitimacy if there was an appropriate mitigation on the noise and the tone coming from the TPA. Insulting and brow-beating the public so that they are less inclined to complain then trumpeting the lack of complaints as a sign that the noise mitigation is successful does not serve the public, your Board, or the orders of government that appoint members to the board.
I am CCing this message to Ron Kobrick, Commodore of the Island Yacht Club, and all members of the TPA Board.
Pam (Councillor Pam McConnell, Ward 28)
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