Shaw Afb Plan Draws a New Foe Crop-Dusters Flying in Close Formation Will Oppose Air Space Proposal

Agricultural planes. more familiarly known as crop-dusters, have become another source of opposition to a military plan to gobble up more civilian air space over Augusta and nearby communities.

Shaw Air Force Base officials near Sumter, S.C., are asking the Federal Aviation Administration to let them train their pilots at altitudes as low as 500 feet over Augusta, Swainsboro, Waynesboro and Millen.

The current low limit of 10,000 feet does not affect commercial or other non-military aircraft, but a 500-foot limit would certainly cause some civilian flight disruptions at airports servicing those communities – not to mention noise and other inconveniences.

Commercial airport officials are urging the FAA to turn down the Shaw request, or at least amend it so it won’t interfere with commercial flights that are already a hard-enough sell for Augusta Regional Airport.

Specific concerns will be aired at environ-mental impact public hearings that the FAA will hold before making its decision later in the year. Among those heard will be veteran Burke County crop- duster Robbie McMillan, president of the South Carolina Aerial Applicators Association. He can point to a couple of midair collisions between low-flying military and agricultural planes in Oklahoma and Washington state.

“What I’m trying to do is show (that a potentially fatal accident) is more than a hypothetical,” says McMillan. “It does happen. I spend my life taking risks and I have a handle on that, but if you throw enough snowballs somebody’s gonna get hit.”

Indeed, let’s not create risky situations that increase the chances of air tragedies.

Some of us who oppose any change in the Air Force’s altitude limit over civilian air space have been accused of a lack of patriotism – of not caring if our young pilots are properly trained for dangerous missions. That’s nonsense. We, of course, want them safely trained in safe air space. But that space is not to be found over communities whose economic health depends in good measure on generating more commercial and private air traffic.

This is a large country with lots of wide open spaces for Air Force pilots to train- including over water off the South Carolina coast.