Letter: There will be no ‘return to normal’ at air station

In your recent article on the increased call for an alternate landing field for Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, the chairman of the local Military Enhancement Committee, Jim Wegmann, is quoted as saying that after the long runway is resurfaced, flight patterns “should return to normal.”

Perhaps he meant the “new normal.”

The Marines have been straightforward in presenting the numbers: with the commencement of F-35B training, the air station now is authorized to conduct more than 105,000 flight operations a year. Roughly 20 percent of those operations are scheduled to utilize the short runway that points directly at Beaufort — exactly the one in use now that is causing so much noise over town.

None of the F-35B materials contain any directive to avoid flying directly over Beaufort as pilots have done in the past. While this ramp up in flights will not be immediate, it will be coming. Not exactly a “return to normal.”

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 3:40 PM with the headline "Letter: There will be no ‘return to normal’ at air station."