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Air Cargo at OSU's Airport, July 2006

An aircraft owned by Ameristar Jet Charter landed at the OSU airport at 10:51 PM on July 13th, 2006 and departed at 11:17 PM.

Ameristar's moto is "Any Cargo. Anytime. Anywhere." The aircraft that they brought in was a Lear Jet 24, a Stage 2 aircraft which is among the loudest types of aircraft allowed to fly today.

WOOSE believes LabCorp's nightly flights into and out of OSU may also constitute air cargo.

Because OSU has taken federal money to maintain their airport, they are not allowed to impose restrictions on any aircraft that can "safely" fly into the airport. If an air cargo company decided to make Don Scott Field a regular night-time stop, they could do this now and they could not be stopped. Further, the air traffic control tower at Don Scott is closed between the hours of 11 PM and 7 AM.

More troubling than the noise, however, is the safety record of the air cargo industry. The Miami Herald recently completed part three of a 9 month investigation into the air cargo industry. Ameristar specifically was mentioned for two fatal crashes since 2001.

The following are some excerpts for the Miami Herald articles:

"Cargo planes operate under less stringent safety rules than passenger planes."
"In nearly a quarter of fatal crashes, mechanical problems were not fixed before cargo pilots took off."
Air cargo "planes typically travel late at night into small airports..."
"Many [air cargo planes] are old -- nearly 26 years old, on average, for the fallen planes, more than three times the age of typical airline passenger aircraft."
"Cargo planes are part of a family of small aircraft, along with air taxis, charters and emergency medical service helicopters, that has the highest crash rate of any type of commercial aviation..."
The Air Cargo Industry "draws young pilots hungry for flight hours and the chance to rise to better-paying jobs."

What can I do?

Because of the way current federal regulations have been designed, there is very little you can do. However, we encourage everyone concerned about this issue to take the following steps.

Write to the University Board of Trustees and your state representatives questioning why the University has been allowed to put us and themselves into this position.
Write to your U.S. congressional representatives asking that current regulations be better enforced and for the rules to be tightened in the areas of safety and noise.

Every single letter has a large impact. A list of the officials named above and their addresses are available on our who to write page.

This page last modified on Thu Mar 27 2008 at 11:59 pm
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