It isn’t often that a new airport opens.
Chennault Airfield (25TX) in Conroe, Texas, has announced completion of phase one construction, which “includes the completion of a 3,100-foot by 70-foot lighted runway, basic airport infrastructure, and the flight school main hangar.”
When I read the story and looked at the rending of the built-out airport, I couldn’t help but notice the housing development just west of the airport.
While the land was once a crop duster strip in the 1970s, it has been abandoned for several decades.
Don’t get me wrong, I love airports. We need more of them.
But Google Maps shows a ring of development surrounding the airport, including a relatively new housing development to the west and to the north, under the departure/arrival paths.
I hope the prevailing runway will be 17 so takeoffs will be performed over wooded, undeveloped (so far) land. If the airport will be standard left hand traffic, aircraft should be west of the houses that are east of the airport.
The flight school is Chennault Aviation Academy and is promoting a Career Pilot Program on its website. This will be busy (noisy?) airport.
I hope the airport owners and the municipality that approved the development are ready for the noise complaints that are likely to follow.
Then again, maybe it’ll be different this time, because the airport wasn’t there first.
I guess a little racism can go a very long way.
Happy Thanksgiving, I will be a little more forceful. This is a joke! A China owned airport in Texas. First, the Academy will hire American CFI’s. Those CFI’s will get their hours and move on to a good paying job. The next group of CFI’s will be prior students who came from China originally. Those China CFI’s will train the next group of cadets from China. What American flight student would want to OR be accepted to train at a China dominated flight school, Zero! By the time the third round (3 yrs) comes around nothing but China student pilots will be based at this airport and those China students will be operating/training from neighboring FAA controlled airfields. I see it as a cancer, it will spread.
Absolutely agree…sadly…
No doubt there will be issues at some point in the future, even if serious concessions/covenants are in place.
For now, noting the “character” of the adjacent west-side residential area: I wonder if they have the resources needed to represent a serious threat to the airport…as opposed to, say, those living near KTIW…
Both very serious concerns, not rocket science to accurately predict the outcomes.