Bates County News

Monday, March 31, 2025

What's Up LeRoy Cook

 What's Up

by LeRoy Cook

 

3-31-2025

 

Suggested Banner: Heads Will Roll

 

Traffic was light around the Butler Airport last week, even though flying weather was intermittently favorable, when the gusty winds abated. Over the past months, since the fuel system was shut down, we’ve seen a decline in transient traffic. Obviously, not having fuel available makes a difference.

 

The Bellanca 7KBA Citabria that had been taking refuge here for a couple of weeks finally got to depart, just before the airport was closed last Monday. Repairs were made to the fuel injection throttle body so it could get back to Lee’s Summit. Other planes coming and going were a Piper Warrior and a Cessna Skyhawk, and a Piper Arrow also visited. Local movements included Jeremie Platt’s Grumman Tiger, Roy Conley’s Grumman Tr2 and a few Cessna 150 training sorties.

 

In national news, a California county has been slapped down by the FAA for refusing to allow leaded 100-octane fuel to be sold at its two airports. Since 2022, Santa Clara County has required operators to stock only 94-octane unleaded gas or STC’d G100UL unleaded, which some plane owners can’t or won’t use. That violates the grant agreements stipulated when the county took federal trust fund money to maintain its airports, one of which is a ban on exclusivity of services provided.

 

The Alaska pilot who got stuck in thin ice on a Kenai Peninsula lake last week, leaving him and his two passengers stranded overnight, has been stuck in more ways than just out on a lake. It turns out that he held only a student pilot’s license, so he can’t legally carry anyone with him. Rules don’t count for much in Alaska, where flying is as common a driving a pickup. About all the FAA can do is revoke his student ticket and perhaps levy a fine.

 

Also last week, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota got upset on Friday when she learned that a Minneapolis-bound airliner departing Washington D.C.’s National airport “narrowly missed” an Air Force T-38 that was passing by on its way to Arlington Cemetery for a fly-over tribute. Actually, while surprising, the system worked as it’s supposed to; airliners are required to carry alerting and resolution gear that warns pilots when a plane gets too close, and that’s why nobody got hurt this time. But, steps will be taken...

 

And then there was the red-faced (and probably former) United Airlines pilot who made his Shanghai-bound Boeing 787 turn around two hours after departing Los Angeles, because he realized he had forgotten to take his passport with him. Better to face consequences at LAX than in Communist China, he figured, but the passengers had to be inconvenienced, arriving six hours late.

 

Our weekly challenge from last week wanted to know what airline advertised its low “peanut fares” by passing out free packs of the nuts to its passengers. That would have been Southwest, back in the days before allergy hysteria. For next time, as Butler airport gets a runway lighting upgrade, in what year was the system being replaced installed? You can send your answers to [email protected].

 



Butler Rodeo Queen and Princess Wanted

  Butler Saddle Club is looking for 2025 Queen and Princess Candidates.   Rodeo queen requirements: 16-21 years o...