Helicopter landing pads being moved at Boulder City Municipal Airport

By Jean Reid Norman

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

The Boulder City Municipal Airport Advisory Committee voted unanimously Oct. 6 to reconfigure the landing area for tour helicopters that use the airport. The helicopters’ landing site will be moved off of a taxiway.

Currently, the helicopters touch down in the middle of Taxiway D, or Delta, which runs next to the hangar and terminal area, Airport Manager Kerry Ahearn said. Private planes use the taxiway to get from their hangars to the runways, she said.

“The helicopters land right on a heavily used taxiway,” Ahearn said.

The new configuration will have helicopters landing 26 feet off the taxiway, closer to the parking pads for the aircraft, Ahearn said.

In addition, the landing spots, called “aim points,” will be repainted. Instead of a Maltese cross, the points will be marked with standard FAA boxes, she said.

The new configuration will also move Papillon helicopters to spaces next to its terminal, she said.

The new configuration won’t fully meet FAA standards, Ahearn told the committee, but “this gets us closer to standards than we are.”

A couple of committee members said they would like to see the helicopter landing sites moved to a little-used runway designed for gliders.

“I thought part of the objective was to get these aiming points off of Delta,” committee member Jim Gross said. “It seems to me they are awfully close to Delta.”

Ahearn said after the meeting that a study needs to be done on the best use for that runway, called 27 Right, which sits at the bottom of a hill that slopes from the terminal and hangar areas. The hill would make creation of a helicopter landing area there expensive, requiring an FAA grant, she said.

“We would have to work with the pilot environment and have to look at alternatives on the best use of that,” she said.

Committee Chairwoman Toni Mattei said using that runway for helicopters might be possible later on. The new configuration “will take us through to that time,” she said.