After a lengthy expression of frustration from Buckeye Mayor Eric Orsborn, the City of Buckeye passed a 20-year Airport Master Plan Tuesday to satisfy a mandate by the Federal Aviation Association.
“We are limited on what we can do with the existing runway layout,” Orsborn said, who has been lobbying for the addition of an east-west runway, referred to by the city as a cross-wind runway.
The city currently has a single runway that points north and south.
The 20-year plan approved on Tuesday includes a plan to lengthen and widen the current runway, something Osborn said is a short-term fix that hinders any plan to best serve more cargo flights expected by the city’s growing commercial and industrial businesses.
“This is what we’re looking to do,” Orsborn said. “We’re limited to what we can do on the existing runway alignment so there’s only so far we can extend out and you start to get any issues with I-10 to the north.”
In light of that, the new plan includes swinging Yuma Road to north around the north end of the proposed longer runway.
He said that once the Airport Master Plan is approved, “we have to immediately go in figuring out what our long range [plan] is.”
He said the FAA would not approve the cross-wind runway over the concern of “one property owner that is kicking back and saying, ‘please do not aim runways directly at buildings’ that we’re contemplating building.”
However, Orsborn, said he thought there was a way to work through that objection.
“It is incredibly important that we move fast on figuring out what our long-range vision is,” Orsborn said. “We’ve got to giddyup on this.”
