Airport, IASCO cooperate on considering flight changes

One of the main concerns for Clarity Entertainment building their sound studios at Stillwater Business Park is the noise from nearby Redding Municipal Airport.

According to Chris Foxworthy, president and chairman of the board for Clarity Entertainment, his crew brought up a portable sound studio and tested sound levels inside as two pilots from IASCO flew various flight patterns over and around the studio.

“Ann Marie (Guay) said her pilots would fly over any angle we wanted,” said Foxworthy. Guay is the general manager of IASCO. The company operates a commercial pilot training program for a major Chinese airline. They currently have 150 students in various stages of a 12-month flight school. They operate 37 aircraft at Redding Municipal Airport.

Foxworthy said they would radio different directions to the IASCO student and instructor pilots and they would fly those coordinates.

By the end of the sound test, the Stillwater property had failed every test, Foxworthy said.

Rerouting flights now is a bit premature since construction on the Stillwater sound stages isn’t even scheduled to begin until September and there are several bureaucratic hurdles to clear, Foxworthy admits.

“We haven’t done anything official yet, but IASCO and the tower control operations crew are talking about how we can minimize noise for all of the airport’s neighbors,” said Rod Dinger, Redding’s Director of Airports.

“We have been working with IASCO to fly different flight profiles,” he said.

Foxworth said both Dinger and Guay have been wonderful to work with and very understanding about the film studio’s noise concerns.

“We are working with the FAA Control Center in Seattle to extend the IFR (instrument flight rules) so that instrument departures can head further out before they make a turn,” Dinger said.

“I am of the belief that we can make some adjustments. We have worked very diligently with IASCO, which is an $18 million contract annually to the city,” Dinger said.

Dinger also operates Benton Air Park, a small-aircraft facility without a control tower, in northwest Redding.

When asked whether IASCO could shift some of its training to the Benton airfield to minimize noise and traffic, Dinger said “the bulk of IASCO’s practice runs require coordinating operations with a control tower.”

However, Dinger would not rule it out completely since “with the down economy, we have seen a reduction in air traffic at Benton.”

Dinger said the flight school could have some of their mid-level training flights shift to Benton, if needed, but student pilots at their beginning of their training and those nearing the end of it need to be at an airport with a control tower.

“IASCO is exploring all of the possibilities and I am all about cooperation,” Dinger said.

While the noise from the airport is a concern for the sound studios at Stillwater, it hasn’t stopped Foxworthy from pushing forward with plans for one of the studios initial projects — “Duggy” (see sidebar).

According to Foxworthy, the studio is planning on building a hanger at the Redding Airport to house two DC-3s used for “Duggy” along with a studio where live-action episodes will be shot.

“We’ve had extensive discussions on the hangar needs. We’ve received the specifications for the ‘Duggy’ hangar,” said Dinger.

Clarity Entertainment is looking to build a 200-foot by 270-foot hangar.