Bob Collins
Normally, that’s a runway at St. Paul’s Downtown Airport. Now, it’s a parking ramp for big money.
Two of the airports three runways have been closed so that there will be a place to put the corporate jets making their way to the Twin Cities.
And there are plenty of them. See all of the blue planes in this air traffic snapshot at 1:45 this afternoon? Those are all corporate jets heading to the downtown St. Paul airport.
The FAA has created routes for each of the Twin Cities airports to keep all the corporate jets away from each other. Jets from the south and west heading to St. Paul have to head for the airspace over Aberdeen, S.D., and then are directed along a flyway to the Princeton area and into St. Paul. Jets from the east fly to Eau Claire and then into St. Paul. Departing jets have to go over Osceola.
Jets flying into Flying Cloud are being directed to airspace over Ottumwa, Iowa first.
From what the map suggests, the bosses aren’t working a full day today.
