Larry Dighera wrote:

(Naples sued FAA and won a court
order reinstating their ability to receive future grants. Cost to
local taxpayers to cover legal expenses to "win" this battle? Five
million dollars).

Is this correct? It is not how I read the latest update at:

http://web.nbaa.org/public/ops/airports/apf/

but perhaps it is out of date. It claims that the court pushed the case
back at the FAA so it could better define why the Naples stage 2 ban is
"unreasonable".

Now, this is a problem in that it does open the door for localities to
impose noise restrictions yet retain grants. I'd guess from the evidence
the FAA apparently didn't offer (based upon my reading of the opinion at:

http://web.nbaa.org/public/ops/airpo...on20050603.pdf

) that the FAA was not hoping for such a decision. It now remains with the
FAA how to combat such things.

Unfortunately, I couldn't locate anything indicating what the FAA will be
doing following that court decision.

- Andrew