• Notes of the Jan 28 and Feb 24 meetings
• Enlarged noise contour maps and drafting tools
• High- and low-altitude aeronautical charts including the SDF area
• Approach plates and standard approach and departure manuals
• A3 handout maps of current and projected noise contours and land uses

Notes of the committee’s two previous meetings were approved. The chair welcomed the renewed participation of senior controllers Dannie Bennett and Susan Jaeger. The controllers responded to a number of general questions by committee members on air traffic control procedures and prospective refinements. Susan also reported feedback from FAA airfield layout authorities on the prospective use of additional navigation aids to refine flight tracks.

The chair then invited individual committee members to return to the available maps, charts and instruments with a view to further development of specific alternatives. Several small groups formed to discuss particular issues and ideas, with attending pilots and controllers providing subject matter expertise.

The main focus of most of the committee’s activity was on navigation aids and their effect on defining flight routes. Close in, one of the principal challenges facing the study is channeling traffic operating north of the airport so as to reduce noise exposure. Since there is no apparent path off the east runway that serves this purpose, attention has focused on runway preference, and on possible paths off the west runway.

The present procedure for departures on runway 35L, which uses a heading of 330 degrees, takes advantage of a corridor of railyards and industrial facilities in which noise impact should be minimal. Still, the close proximity of the UofL campus, Churchill Downs, and the Beechmont and Old Louisville neighborhoods make it critically important to minimize deviation from the prescribed track. Nearly all the complaints on departures from this runway studied by the committee have been traceable not to traffic on this track, but to traffic straying from the track.

Committee members drew two inferences from this situation. First, better control of the departure azimuth could have large benefits in an area like this where a narrow path is crucial. For the experts present, having a navigation aid on the field with directional and distance-measuring equipment was the apparent solution. By this means, departing aircraft could be assigned a radial and a prescribed distance to a fixed reference point, defining a route the aircraft can follow with continuously updated instrument feedback and correction. Members resolved to revisit specific SID possibilities such equipment could raise.

For arrivals, actually the more frequent operation north of the airport, the key challenge has been the obvious need for arriving aircraft to achieve runway heading at a comfortable point before landing. Extended runway centerlines appear to pass directly over Shelby Park in the case of the east runway, and Central Park in the west. In the west case, at least, an off-centerline approach taking advantage of the same geography noted above could have big payoffs.

The committee was introduced in its last meeting to the idea of a localizer directional aid, or LDA, that could serve this purpose. Members examined several approach plates for other airports that indicate divergent approaches, including our own crosswind runway, whose approach can be defined as a radial from the current off-site aid (IIU VORTAC). With glide-slope-measuring equipment, experts agreed that an on-site LDA could serve the same and other related purposes for arrivals on the main runways, and in particular the west runway. Mariano Floro and Bob Welch prepared a rough sketch of an LDA-directed approach over the industrial and railyard areas northwest of the airport that would apply a divergence of only about eight or ten degrees, and achieve runway heading at least 3000 feet before arrival.

Issues of cost, siting equipment, and updating procedures remain, to be sure, as controllers made clear. Still, such an approach, if tightly controlled, appears to have the potential of deflecting threshold noise contours entirely away from sensitive areas, and was thus judged worthy of careful and complete evaluation.

The committee aims to resume specific ‘map reconnaissance’ at its next meeting, and work with consultants to share ideas and develop options. The chair undertook to propose a specific time and place for the next meeting as soon as additional information arrives on the timeline for formal analysis by the consulting team, and the subsequent Study Group meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 9:30 PM.

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