FAA: New airport makes sense

PANAMA CITY                                                       July 5 2007

Construction may last until 2011
S. Brady Calhoun
News Herald Writer
747-5075
bcalhoun@pcnh.com

Douglas Murphy, the regional administrator for the southern Region of the Federal Aviation Administration, touted the FAA new 10-year budget proposal and said the administration firmly supports the new airport in West Bay.

"I think that new airport makes a lot of sense,'' Murphy said. It will "attract new airlines and perhaps low cost carriers.''

Murphy likened Bay County's new airport to the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport located near Bentonville. That airport was built in 1998 partly because of the needs of Wal-Mart, Murphy said, the retailer corporate offices are in Bentonville.

Murphy also talked about construction plans for the new airport saying that the current schedule for opening in late 2009 was "realistic but ambitious.'' He suggested that a more realistic schedule would be somewhere between 2009 and 2011.

The Airport Authority plans to relocate the Panama City-Bay County International Airport to a 4,000-acre, St. Joe Co.-donated site at West Bay in 2009. The $331 million project is to be funded via state and federal grants, bonds and the sale of the current airport property.

Murphy has been with the FAA for nearly four decades, he oversees eight states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The region has 603 public airports and 86 commercial service airports.

Murphy was in Panama City on Thursday to raise awareness for the FAA's new 10-year budget plan. The old plan will expire on Sept. 30 of this year.

The new plan, called the Next Generation Air Transportation System Financing Reform Act of 2007, would eliminate the domestic ticket tax, frequent flyer tax, and the domestic segment tax and replace them with a larger tax on commercial jet fuel, aviation gasoline and general aviation jet fuel.

The FAA's annual budget would drop from $14.8 billion a year to $14.1 billion, Murphy said. He added that the cut would most likely come from underutilized airport grants.

Murphy said that under the new plan the price of an airline ticket should drop by about 6 percent. Congress is currently analyzing the plan.

For more on this story, see Friday's paper.

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