FBOs
Touching Bases: FAA's E-STMP program under fire, again
A special traffic management program (STMP) for the Sun Valley, Idaho area last month has evoked the ire of some pilots who could not get slots.

A special traffic management program (STMP) for the Sun Valley, Idaho area last month has evoked the ire of some pilots who could not get slots. As happened last winter with some remote ski-country airports, such as Eagle, Colo., near the Vail resort, several pilots have complained on the NBAA Air Mail Internet forum that fractional operators have abused the slot system by using their dispatch staffs to acquire and hoard slots that they didn’t use. “Not so,” says NBAA, and the FAA’s Salt Lake Center agrees.

According to FAA records, there were 58 reservations filed for July 7, the first day of the Sun Valley STMP. Of those, 45 did not show and did not cancel their reservations. But the FAA says only nine of the no-shows (20 percent) were fractionally owned airplanes.