By Sean Schantzen
Commercial airplanes will soon fly over the Cottonwood canyons and the most populated parts of Salt Lake City if the FAA implements the proposed changes in flight routes in and out of Salt Lake International Airport.
'Picture as many as 500 airplanes circling over the Wasatch and dropping between the mountain peaks of our wilderness areas and thundering across the entire valley before landing at the airport,' said Gavin Noyes of Save Our Canyons.
Currently, flights arriving and leaving Salt Lake City fly over less-populated regions of the western Salt Lake Valley and the Great Salt Lake.
The proposed new flight routes will direct about half of the flights in and out of Salt Lake over the Wasatch Mountains and metropolitan Salt Lake, Noyes said.
Environmentalists and participants in outdoor activities, such as skiing and hiking, are worried that the rerouted flights will destroy the tranquility and peacefulness of the Wasatch Front Mountains.
'You go skiing to enjoy the out of doors, the peace and quiet, and to avoid the hustle and bustle of the more metropolitan areas in Utah,' said Rodney Boynton, advisor for the BYU FreeRiders club.
One of the biggest issues is that the FAA hasn''t involved the public in any of the decision process, said David Witherspoon, member of the board with Save Our Canyons.
'We''ve received no indication from the FAA as to how many flyovers there will be or how high they will be flying over at,' said Laura McIndoe, assistant town administrator for the town of Alta. 'In the future, we could have a regular freeway over our heads.'
According to the National Environmental Policy Act, governmental agencies must seek public input when dealing with any environmental policy that impacts the public.
Air traffic is expected to increase 30 percent by 2015 and the changes are necessary to accommodate higher traffic, according to the FAA.
'There isn''t an air traffic problem now and there won''t be one in the future,' Witherspoon said. 'Those projections are based on pre-Sept. 11 numbers; newer figures show that air traffic has been going down since Sept. 11.'
Barbara Gann, public relations director for the Salt Lake International Airport, said, 'The Salt Lake Airport doesn''t have any problems with large amounts of air traffic right now. In fact, numbers have been going down over the last few years.'
Some locals also worry about the possible impacts the reroutes could have on the recreational aspect of Utah''s economy.
'It''s possible that fewer people will want to take advantage of Utah''s wilderness and recreation activities if there are commercial jets flying over them,' Witherspoon said.
Other locals aren''t even aware of the details of the proposed reroutes.
'I don''t know the details of what''s going on,' said Nathan Rafferty of SkiUtah. 'I do know that anything that takes away from the skiing experience isn''t something we support.'
Possible alternatives to rerouting flights over the Wasatch Mountains and Salt Lake City include requiring airlines to spread arrival and departure times throughout the day instead of clumping them together like they do now.