10/19/09: NF Air Reserve Experts Explain Need for WNY Low Level Flight Training

Driving around Niagara County you may notice a military plane or two in the air. The Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station flies several planes a day on low level training exercises.
“It’s pretty crazy, planes are flying overhead all the time and I mean it’s pretty loud, said” Lockport Road resident Dave Lancomb. He says traffic by land and air makes life noisy around Lockport Road. But if Lancomb had to get rid of one, he’s gladly give up the low flying planes traveling to and from the Niagara Air Reserve Station.
“It’s three times as bad as the traffic. It’s just bad it’s annoying,” Lancomb added.
Annoying, but necessary according to area military officials. The base offers 60 various training operations to Air National Guard and Reserve Airmen.
“It’s tremendously mountainous in certain areas of Afghanistan. If we have to get a load into our Special Forces we can use the terrain by flying low level,” said Lieutenant Cornel Dave Re with the 914th Airlift Wing.
Re and Major Reed Mohilewsk briefed reporters at the Air Reserve Station Monday on the need to continue the low level flight training around Western New York.
Low level flying or “C-130” missions are considered anything under 3,000 feet. Airmen use these to transport everything from water to ammunition.
“We need to sneak in somewhere, so that nobody knows we’re there. Pick up something of drop something off. And sneak out,” said Major Mohilewsky with the 328th Airlift Squadron.
Lieutenant Cornel Re said before the air station underwent BRAC changes, it was used to primarily train airmen on mid-air refueling operations. They have since shifted their training to focus on air drops and other low level flying operations. The base conducts six low level training flights a day. The run two lines 12:30-3pm Monday through Thursday. There also an evening session from 3-10pm.
Military officials say they save their intense combat training for overseas desert terrain.
“There is a red flag mission where we can fly very aggressively, there’s no one out there and it mimics a wartime environment where we can fly more aggressively,” added Re describing a flight training course in Afghanistan.
The Buffalo-Niagara airspace is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration and United States Air Force to make sure the airmen take caution around residential communities. Disgruntled residents often come from smaller neighborhoods under the air traffic.
“The FAA describes a community based on a population per square mile. And people think they’re in a community and they’re not,” explained Major Mohilewsky. He says the Air Force National Guard public affairs office fields daily complaint calls from people about the overhead noise. Mohilewsky says they return and address every call.
FAA and US Air Force regulations require navigators to fly 1,000 feet above designated communities. They also have to abide by the air space restrictions especially in the Buffalo Metropolitan area where there are numerous “no fly” zones.
Some Lockport Road residents say they have gotten use to the noise from the planes, but would like to see them travel a little higher and away from their homes.
“It get’s annoying a lot of times. I mean you live her for eight or nine years and you pretty much get used to it,” said Lockport Road neighbor Dave Lacomb.