The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that airports maintain an approved “Airport Layout Plan” (ALP) that shows existing and planned airport facilities, including runway/taxiway layout and plans for the tower and terminal, aircraft parking spaces for both private and commercial aviation, and more. Pitkin County needs a new ALP, and the FAA requires that it meet certain standards, mostly related to safety, in order to continue receiving federal airport funding. (Because airports incur huge capital costs like runway and terminal construction and maintenance—costs that are hard for communities to cover—airports receive large amounts of federal money. An FAA-approved ALP is required to receive those funds.) In 2019, to ensure Pitkin County’s new ALP would best align with community values, the county appointed 123 citizens to serve on five working groups over fifteen months to create the “Common Ground Recommendations.” Since then, the BOCC has been working to get FAA approval of an Airport Layout Plan that would deliver those Common Ground goals set by our citizens.

 Yes. The airport is in bad shape. No one disputes this. The terminal is woefully inadequate for both travelers and airport staff. It needs to be completely replaced. The runway is suffering after years of patchwork fixes and needs a complete rebuild. These projects will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, money the community does not have. The FAA will only fund the new runway if we present them with an ALP that meets federal aviation standards. Fortunately, the County’s submitted plan is acceptable, and the FAA is considering it right now. 

The Common Ground Recommendations included 14 suggestions and can be accessed online. Their big-picture objectives, however, can be summed up by the recommendations’ four Core Community Goals:

1. Safety in the air and on the ground.
2. Reduce greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions by at least 30%.
3. Manage the growth of airline enplanements to be consistent with community growth management plans.
4. Reduce noise by at least 30%.

Other specific Common Ground recommendations include seamless ground connectivity to reduce vehicle trips to and from the airport, building a new net-zero terminal that serves as a model for the world and reflects our community’s values and our connections to arts and culture, and a dramatically improved experience for both travelers and airport staff.

• A 21st Century airport is one that’s served by the cleanest, quiet aircraft possible as those aircraft come online (including aircraft that are in use today but can’t land in Aspen), as well as electric, zero-carbon planes when they finally become a reality.
• It’s an airport that is connected to a mass-transit system that offers the most convenient option for travelers and airport staff getting to and from the airport.
• It’s an airport whose net-zero terminal incorporates every climate-friendly technology possible–which will mainly mean being 100-percent electric with no fossil fuels used to run anything other than the planes.  
• It’s an airport that sets the global standard for sustainability and emissions reduction.
  It’s an airport that supports the County’s growth targets, not adds to them.
• It’s an airport that is a model for the world from a climate perspective.

Every item on this list is only possible with FAA funds. 

Newer aircraft are generally more fuel efficient and emit lower GHG emissions. By modernizing our airport, we will be able to accommodate the aircraft of the future, which will be far less polluting.

Short Term:  Some low-emission planes are already available. The Airbus A220-100, for example, emits less than half the carbon pollution-per-passenger-mile of the CRJ700 that currently serves Aspen — and the citizens of the Airport Vision Committee suggested the A220-100 as the ideal plane to serve Aspen now. (Delta is already flying it, but the plane can’t serve Aspen today because its wingspan exceeds 95 feet, the maximum allowed on today’s airport.)  Other emission reducing measures include replacing auxiliary power units (APUs) with clean electrical plug-ins for parked aircraft; this would significantly reduce the pollution and fumes that airport neighbors breathe today.

Intermediate Term:  We can reduce aircraft emissions though strategies like carbon-based landing fees for airliners and private aircraft. We could also build a right-sized, net-zero new terminal, electrify the airfield with 100% renewable power, require the use of sustainable aviation fuel, install an on-site solar farm, and employ carbon-offset credits.

Note that strategies like a carbon-based landing fee will require policy change at the federal level, but Aspen and Pitkin County have successfully achieved comparable federal policy changes in the past, and we intend to be a model for how other airports can help our nation address the existential crisis of climate change. This is a policy change we can and must win.

Long Term: Low carbon and net-zero planes of the future will likely use electric propulsion, hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel, or a hybrid of these. These future aircraft, whether “narrow-body” or “blended-wing,” are predicted to have one thing in common: wider wingspans. Aeronautical engineers use terms like “longer, lighter, thinner” to describe plane wings of the future, which will almost certainly exceed 95 feet in wingspan. If we’re serious about addressing climate change, wider wingspans are a given. They are an essential component of becoming the greenest airport in America.

Aircraft with lower greenhouse gas emissions are normally quieter, so much of the explanation in #5 (above) applies equally to reducing aircraft noise. 

For example, today’s Airbus A220-100, which has half the carbon emissions of the CRJ700, is also significantly quieter than the CRJ. On the private aircraft side, a larger plane like the Gulfstream G650 is significantly quieter and more fuel efficient than the G4, which is common at our airport today, yet has the same passenger count. ASE’s current prohibition on wingspans greater than 95 feet prevents newer planes like the A220-100 and the G650 from landing here, but as discussed above, we will ultimately need wider wingspans if we are to achieve our climate change goals.

The Common Ground Recommendations contain other noise reduction strategies:

• Replacing noisy auxiliary power units (APUs) with clean and quiet electrical plug-ins for parked planes
• Increasing aeronautical spacing (a safety measure) for planes in the air
• Providing berms and sound walls around the airport

It will. Plans include a new runway, a new green terminal with fewer gates, a wider and safer separation between taxiway and runway, changes to the ramp (aircraft parking area), sound berms to reduce noise, and many other improvements across the airfield. The new ALP will create a modern airport at what’s called an Airport Design Group III (ADG-III) standard. An airport’s “design group” determines the maximum size and weight of the aircraft that can serve it. Our airport currently sits between an ADG-II and an ADG-III. Rather than the 79-foot maximum wingspan allowance of an ADG-II airport or the 118-foot maximum allowance of an ADG-III, our airport allows wingspans up to 95 feet. Call us an “ADG-II-plus.” We have occupied this in-between spot due to modifications to FAA standards that have been in place since 1999. But the FAA is doing away with modifications to standards as a matter of federal policy. The agency will not approve an Airport Layout Plan that includes them. So we have a choice: Go to full ADG-III or drop to ADG-II.

Wider wingspans, yes. We need them. Aeronautical engineers agree that wider wingspans are in our future, no matter what, and they are certainly essential if we are to reduce airline greenhouse gas emissions. (See the greenhouse-gas discussion in #5, above.)

But even though an ADG-III airport could allow for planes with wingspans up to 118 feet, there’s ample evidence that larger planes with dramatically higher passenger volume don’t make economic (or aeronautical) sense for Aspen and that the airlines won’t bring them here. Based on the planes Aspen’s airlines currently own and have ordered for the future, it’s clear that Aspen is best served by regional aircraft, not large mainline planes.

Possibly as soon as this fall, United Airlines and SkyWest will begin using the Embraer E175 as their plane for Aspen, replacing the Bombardier CRJ700 that is currently the only commercial airplane that serves us. American Airlines is showing a similar likelihood. The E175 is almost exactly the same size as the CRJ700, but it’s more polluting and slightly noisier. It’s main appeal is that it is brand new and allows the airlines to retire the aging CRJ700’s.

Delta’s plane of choice is the Airbus A220-100. It has a higher passenger count than the CRJ700, but it is dramatically quieter and cleaner, so much so that this plane was deemed the ideal future plane for Aspen in the Common Ground Recommendations. In Delta’s configuration, the A220-100 seats 109 passengers, which is 33 more than the CRJ-700, but only 9 more than the BA-146 that served the Aspen Airport for close to 20 years. Its scale fits our community character.

Only a handful of “big privates” are being used in the U.S. anymore. One or two land each year at ASE, and no one has ever noticed. The next generation of private planes have identical passenger counts to the biggest private jets that fly into Aspen today, but they are significantly quieter and more fuel efficient, in part due to their wider wingspans. This point is overlooked by some opponents of a modern airport: achieving climate goals requires more efficient planes with longer wings, whether private jets or commercial aircraft. But a smaller runway won’t accommodate those modern planes.

No, the new airport plan contains stronger growth management measures than today’s airport. The County’s new terminal plan calls for six gates (expandable to eight in the future). By contrast, today’s airport already has eight gates, plus two additional airline parking spaces.  

Today’s “gates” are defined simply by paint on tarmac and moveable sets of stairs that attach to a plane; their number could be expanded in a few minutes with a paintbrush. The BOCC’s Common Ground resolution calls for six in the new airport, expandable to eight gates “if necessary for safe and efficient airport operations.” The expansion to eight would require separate approval by both the citizens’ Airport Advisory Board and the Board of County Commissioners by resolution or ordinance. 

In addition, the new airport plan calls for “Flexible Gates.” These gates “flex” down for larger aircraft (e.g. the Airbus A200-100), thus keeping the airport’s total enplanement/deplanement capacity at approximately the same level, regardless of aircraft size. Bottom line: the number of gates and total enplanements will be right-sized to match Pitkin County’s growth management guidelines.

Growth in this valley is principally controlled by bed base, not the airport’s passenger capacity. Close to 50 percent of all local and out-of-state visitors to the Roaring Fork Valley use airports other than the Aspen-Piktin County Airport. Increased flight capacity into our airport would materially reduce the number of vehicle trips to and from Denver, Eagle, and Grand Junction. 

Visitor growth is controlled by county and municipal governments. Almost every town in our valley has made efforts to stem the growth of short-term rentals that convert residential housing into lodging. Our communities are making smart, concerted efforts to manage their growth as it relates to tourism. Pitkin County recently completed a large-scale study with a community volunteer board to create the Pitkin County Growth Management Plan. That work made clear that a big driver of vehicle trips and the sense of busyness in the valley ties directly to the construction and servicing of the residential sector, particularly large homes.

The FAA has stated in writing that because we have failed so far to comply with federal airport design requirements, we have been cut off from federal funding to rebuild our deteriorating runway, and we will lose additional funding in the future.  

The FAA sets certain rigid standards around safety (which takes the form of runway/taxiway separaton, runway width, etc.) and accessibility (which is included in the FAA’s required enplanement forecast). The FAA won’t budge on those criteria. If a community ignores those requirements, the FAA will pull its funding. This has now begun, and it puts our community in a precarious financial situation in the immediate term and a truly untenable one in the future. We are now on the hook for millions of dollars in annual maintenance–again, the runway is failing and requires regular fixes–and later, the entire cost of a new runway and terminal, which will run into hundreds of millions of dollars.  

It already has. The airport is no longer receiving federal funds and the community is spending millions to do annual maintenance on the runway. This is not a question of whether the FAA will blink if the community sticks to its guns: it already won the staring contest, and the money has been pulled. The FAA has made it perfectly clear in writing, in person, and in Washington D.C.  that they will no longer fund repairs or maintenance for ASE  until the airfield plan is in compliance with FAA requirements.

If Pitkin County’s Airport Layout Plan does not meet FAA requirements and is therefore rejected, the FAA will likely downgrade the Pitkin County Airport to Airport Design Group II status. That would mean commercial airlines could not fly their next generation planes into town. The only commercial plane that could still land here would be the aging CRJ 700. One local aviation expert said this about an ADG-II airport designation: “In my opinion, the threat of a downgrade to ADG-II is effectively a poison pill for the future of commercial flights at ASE. It may not die immediately, but a slow and painful death is almost certain over a period of time as capacity would decline and commercial flights into ASE would become increasingly unaffordable for a product that’s going to become increasingly dated and less reliable (due to it being tied to the CRJ700).” The result of a slow decline in commercial air service would be increased costs, loss of visitation, loss of jobs, and therefore the increasing privatization of the airport. 

Losing a piece of commercial air service in the event of a downgrade to ADG-II status would also increase traffic and congestion as more people drive from Eagle, Rifle, and Denver. 

The three biggest physical projects are increasing the runway-taxiway separation, widening the runway, and building a badly needed new terminal building.  The FAA requires the first two in order for our airport to conform with the FAA’s “Airport Design Category (ADG) III” safety standards. The Airport Layout Plan needs to be completed now to avoid losing federal funding that expires in 2026.

Building the entire new airport will likely take around 5 – 9 years (depending on how much of the work can be done simultaneously and how much must be constructed serially. Runway reconstruction could happen as soon as 2026.