US air tour operators are to take the US Government to court, fearing new limits on Grand Canyon sightseeing flights will force smaller operators out of business. The new rules are expected to cover other national parks.
New Federal Aviation Administration rules will limit the number of flights for each operator. The flights allocated will be based on the number of Grand Canyon air tours reported from May 1997 to April 1998. As tour activity during this period was hit by the Asian economic slump, the rule will reduce current flights by between 10% and 70%, depending on the operator, says the USAir Tour Association (USATA).
In 1996, in a move to restore "natural quiet" to national parks, the FAA capped operators' fleets, preventing them from adding aircraft. As a result, when the tour market recovered from the Asian downturn, operators moved to larger aircraft to meet demand.
Their investment in larger, as well as quieter, aircraft is threatened by the flight limits, USATA argues. "This could put operators out of service," says president Steve Bassett. The legal action will attack the FAA's economic analysis, which the USATA says "dramatically underestimated" the impact of its new rule.
Source: Flight International
