The FAA banned jets from Florida’s Lantana/Palm Beach County Airport in 1973, but that ban is now lifted, the Palm Beach Post reported on Tuesday. Errol Forman, a retired Eastern Air Lines pilot, had landed his newly acquired 1983 Cessna Citation I/SP jet there in May, and a neighbor reported the violation to authorities. Forman then challenged the restriction and filed a formal complaint with the FAA, with the argument that the county was violating conditions of its federal grants. “It looks like the FAA made a reasonable decision,” Forman told the Post on Monday.
Deandra Brooks, the FAA’s airport compliance specialist for the region, wrote in a Dec. 6 letter that while her agency had declared no objections in 1973, she was unable to find any documentation or analysis showing “why previous FAA reviewers believed this discriminatory restriction was just or reasonable.” She said the ban has “denied a class of aeronautical users the benefits of federal funded improvements” at the airport. An airport neighbor, William Coakley, told the Post in December that the community wouldn’t be happy to see the ban lifted. “We fear for our lives over here,” Coakley said. “It was already saturated before the helicopters got here. Now they want jet traffic? … There will be a storm of protest.”
