The Durango-La Plata County Airport has obtained a certification that may help prevent flight delays or cancellations when on-site weather sensors fail.
In November, a broken visibility sensor led to 18 flight cancellations over two days because this certification was not in place.
The Federal Aviation Administration certification now will allow airport staff to complete weather observations for pilots.
Staff at the airport have been trained for about a year to complete weather observations during equipment failures. However, because the airport didn’t have federal certification, employing staff to compile visibility data during the outage in November would have been illegal, said Kip Turner, director of aviation, during the flight cancellations.
The National Weather Service used to certify airports to do weather observations, but it gave the responsibility to the FAA over a year ago. But the FAA was not immediately ready to administer the program, Turner said at the time. He could not say what motivated an FAA official to visit the airport and evaluate it for the certification in December.
The weather observers will now be able to provide data such as temperature, wind speed and direction, sky condition and visibility to pilots if sensors maintained by the National Weather Service ever fail.
“It allows us to continue to operate in a very safe and compliant manner when that system is down,” Turner said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
