Pilots who regularly fly in and out of Akron Fulton International Airport say it is safe to travel to the airport.
And in bad weather and poor visibility, similar to conditions when a small private jet crashed this month in Akron while approaching the airport, there are procedures that pilots are supposed to follow to ensure a safe landing, they say.
Pilots nearing Akron Fulton are instructed to abort if they cannot see the runway at a certain point on their landing approach. The option then is to climb, circle around and try again or to fly to a nearby airport such as Akron-Canton.
“There is nothing complicated. There is nothing unusual. There is nothing hard,” said Jim Case, 67, who flew out of Akron Fulton for decades. “If you do not visually see the airport, you do not go down.”
Case, a retired Akron Fire Department captain, now lives in Florida, where he works at an airport. He still flies regularly. “I had a hangar at Akron Fulton for years,” Case said. “It’s a very nice airport.”
Case and four other pilots familiar with the Akron airport said there are no unique challenges to flying into Akron Fulton. They agreed to talk following the crash of a small corporate twin-engine jet into an apartment building Nov. 10 as it was attempting to land at the airport in cold, misty and rainy weather. All nine people on board were killed in the afternoon crash in Akron’s Ellet neighborhood; no one on the ground was hurt.
In a preliminary report released Wednesday, federal investigators noted that a flight instructor who had just landed at Akron Fulton warned the chartered jet about low visibility as the jet was about 10 miles from the runway. Investigators have not said or speculated on what caused the crash.
Denise Hobart teaches people how to fly out of the airport. She owns and operates American Winds Flight Academy and air charter business.
“One of the great assets that Northeast Ohio has is this great airport,” Hobart said. American Winds has trained several hundred pilots out of the airport in the 13 years since she and her late husband started the business, she said.
First-time fliers do not need to be instructed about anything unusual about taking off and landing at Akron Fulton, Hobart said. “There’s nothing,” she said.
No staffed tower
The airport does not have a staffed control tower. Instead, planes take instruction from the control tower at nearby Akron-Canton Airport as they go to or depart Akron Fulton, Hobart and others said.
That’s not unusual: The vast majority of U.S. airports do not have control towers.
Of the 19,511 public, private and military airports in the United States, just 513 have control towers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The majority of U.S. airports — a bit more than 14,300 of the total — are small, privately owned operations, with most having unpaved and unlit runways.
According to the latest available information, about 70 planes take off and land daily out of city-owned Akron Fulton, which dates back to 1929.
Jets regularly fly in and out of the airport, said John Hogarth, who runs the airport’s fixed-base operator on behalf of the city. There are days that the runway is “packed” with jets, he said.
Heavier aircraft such as most jets have to fly a pattern more than 500 feet higher than lighter planes as they approach the airport, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association said.
As planes approach the long and wide main asphalt runway at Akron Fulton — 6,337 feet long and 150 feet wide — pilots can be assisted by the airport’s “localizer” or radio navigation antenna that tells an aircraft when it is centered on the runway, American Winds’ Hobart said.
The localizer does not tell how high off the ground an aircraft is; that’s the responsibility of the pilot and flight crew using their own instrumentation and other onboard equipment, she and others said.
Pilots have specific minimum altitudes that their aircraft cannot go below as they reach specific distances from the airport, Hobart said.
All aircraft have altimeters that tell a pilot how far above sea level they are, but those devices aren’t linked to a so-called instrument approach landing, Hobart said.
More sophisticated aircraft have expensive equipment that determines altitude and location, she said.
Hobart said that in her 14 years of flying at Akron Fulton, she had to abort a landing just once because a snow cloud obscured the runway. In that instance, she chose to land at nearby Akron-Canton Airport.
Akron utility giant FirstEnergy Corp. keeps its fleet of three business jets, two Cessna Citation XLS models and an Embraer Legacy 600, at Akron-Canton Airport.
The larger airport, with its longer runway, is more suited to the jets, FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said.
But when there has been bad weather such as a thunderstorm hovering over Akron-Canton Airport, FirstEnergy’s pilots have opted to land at Akron Fulton and even traveled further to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, he said.
Tim Lanigan, a 37-year-old flight instructor based out of Wadsworth, said Akron Fulton airport “is very, very easy” to fly in and out of.
“As far as airports go, it is a nice facility,” Lanigan said.
No special challenges
Even bad weather doesn’t call for pilots to take unusual measures to land safely at Akron Fulton, he said.
“There’s nothing special about Fulton that would make it less safe,” Lanigan said.
He and others described the terrain the airport sits in as a kind of “bowl” but also said that does not pose special flight challenges.
“The airport itself is in a bowl. You can see the elevations,” Case said. “That has nothing to do with anything. That being in a bowl means nothing.”
Mike Emich, an Akron Fire Department lieutenant, pilot and balloonist, said he has kept a small plane at Akron Fulton for about eight years.
“It’s not a tough place for me to fly in and out of with my plane,” Emich said. “I have flown in and out many times. It’s a nice airport.”
The airport “bowl” might be noticed by someone landing at the airport for the first time but subsequent landings would become second nature, Emich said.
John Malene has been flying out of Akron Fulton since the 1950s. He is now in his mid-80s, owns two small planes and continues to fly.
The Cuyahoga Falls resident and retired Goodyear and Loral engineer, who is a certified flight instructor, is a member of the Aero Fliers Inc. The organization, which is based at Akron Fulton, got its start under Goodyear as the Wingfoot Fliers. Malene also has won national aviation awards, including the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“I’ve been flying out of [Akron Fulton] since 1954,” Malene said. “It’s routine, really. … I don’t know of anybody who’s had a problem going in there.”
Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him @JimMackinnonABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/JimMackinnonABJ. His stories can be found at www.ohio.com/writers/jim-mackinnon.