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Board seeks FAA contact to restore RNAV approach from south; director says procedure largely designed
Summary
Airport staff said an RNAV approach from the south (RNAV 34) would restore access in certain wind and night conditions; staff said the FAA contact who had been working the procedure retired and the city will seek a new regional contact to reactivate the work.
The Cleveland Airport Board discussed efforts to establish an RNAV approach from the south (RNAV 34) to improve access to Cleveland Municipal Airport in certain wind and weather conditions and to reduce flight times for aircraft approaching from the south and east.
The airport director said he has tried to locate a new FAA contact after the regional official who had been handling the procedure left and that he could not identify a current point person. He asked the board for help finding a regional FAA contact to reactivate the procedure.
The director described the operational effect of adding an approach: the airport “used to have 2 approaches into the airport” — an RNAV GPS 16 (an LPV‑type procedure) and a VOR approach from the southeast that was canceled. He said the lack of a southern approach means that when winds favor Runway 34 and weather is low at night, “there is no way in instrument conditions with an orderly wind to get into Cleveland” and pilots must divert to other airports such as Conroe.
He told the board that a southern RNAV approach would require no ground equipment investment because it is GPS based, and that the primary work is designing the procedure, submitting it to flight check and having flight inspection validate it. “If you're coming out for 1 approach, you can just add on a second approach,” he said, though he acknowledged the agency workload and that he was oversimplifying.
Board members said the work had progressed in prior years: fixes named ALF and VEIL had been reserved for Cleveland in earlier planning cycles, and airport staff said earlier design changes had been expected to raise certain minimum altitudes by about 100 feet. The director said he was unsure whether those planned changes appeared on the next charting cycle and asked the board to help identify the appropriate FAA regional contact to continue the project.
No formal vote or binding direction was recorded; board members committed to help identify FAA contacts and revive the procedure’s processing with the regional office.
