I fly only out of CDW these days since Century moved from MMU last year. I
agree, MMU is very GA unfriendly, and it's due to two things:
1) The developers of the airport have the SWEETEST government deal you
could ask for ... they pay $100k a year to the city of Morristown (I think,
not sure if any of that goes to the county or state) for the rights to
develop the airport, pretty much at will. For the next 99 years (give or
take a few, I don't know all the details).
2) Signature is it. If you're transient, you go to them, or you don't get
gas. As a result, they abuse their monopoly power significantly... it's one
of the few places I know of where Jet-A regularly costs _less_ than 100LL.
And the last time I checked, it was around $3.50 for 100LL.
Also, there's a landing fee... $10, but it's only charged on a daily
basis... so you go for some practice touch & goes, and you only pay the $10
once per day.
I don't know if anybody in the gov't around there has wised up to what's
going on at the airport, but I'm pretty sure the surrounding communities are
none too pleased with the almost constant pace of jet traffic in and out of
there, starting at 7am and lasting well into the evening.
I wouldn't worry about this happening at CDW for a couple of reasons... One,
they don't have a long enough runway to support some of the jets that land
at MMU and TEB... and in the short term, I know of no plans to create one.
Second, the airspace around CDW, when 4/22 is open (right now it's closed
for repaving), is typically configured so that planes can only depart and
arrive on runways 22 and 27. They never, ever use runway 9 unless the wind
is blowing a good gale force straight down runway 9... The reason is because
if they did, planes would be streaming in directly in the path of MMU's
approach for runway 23. Runway 4 does get used, but only if the winds
absolutely require it.
If they created an ILS or WAAS approach for 22, there would be more traffic
to contend with, and that would screw up the already busy approach routes
going into EWR and TEB. The ATIS regularly says "caution planes descending
from 3000 to 2000 into Teterboro" when they're handling a heavy load, and I
don't think that adding planes to that mix would help matters much. I could
be wrong, but that's my impression judging by the way things typically work
there.
--
Guy Elden Jr.
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