FAA order halting parallel takeoffs at Centennial Airport disrupts flight training and operations

An order from the Federal Aviation Administration is affecting operations at Centennial Airport.

At the start of this month, the agency banned parallel takeoffs due to safety concerns, but without advance notice or input from stakeholders. Now those stakeholders say the move is leading to less air traffic at the second-busiest airport in the Denver metro area, as well as major training delays.

The FAA says it made the changes because of a safety risk assessment released on Sept. 29, which analyzed nine airports with parallel runways nationwide.

WATCH: FAA order halting parallel takeoffs at Centennial Airport disrupts flight training and operations

But Centennial's Airport Authority says they received no advance warning or opportunity for public engagement on these changes that are now having impacts on flight schools and other airport tenants a move the Airport Authority calls highly unusual.

Toby Scott is one of the flight students affected by the change hes currently working on turning his passion for flying into a career.

"I want to go all the way to the big leagues. I want to get to a legacy airline," Scott said. "I'm sort of on the fast track for my commercial license right now.

But getting to his goal requires flying through some turbulence.

"I was actually in a practice flight with my instructor when the controllers at the tower were saying, 'Hey, by the way, there's no more touch and goes or patterns permitted per the FAA,'" Scott said.

That's how flight students and instructors learned the FAA had ended parallel departures at Centennial Airport on Oct. 1, after a risk assessment found planes were sometimes drifting too close together during takeoff. The FAA counted 60 such incidents in the past year two of which it says nearly ended in midair collision.

"It's not the only airport that has seen some type of restrictions, but it's the first one that, to my knowledge, that these this level of restriction has come out," said Brad Schuster, Northwest Mountain Regional Manager of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Schuster said he's concerned with how the FAA rolled out the changes.

"This didn't feel very well coordinated with the aeronautical community, certainly not with our organization," Schuster said.

The Airport Authority said it met with FAA officials on Oct. 13 to push back and advocate for local stakeholders. An FAA Safety Risk Management Panel is scheduled for Oct. 2728 to assess the risks and explore potential solutions, and the Airport Authority is pressing for community representatives to have a seat at the table.

Our focus is on supporting a thorough, informed process that leads to appropriate mitigations that reduce risk to aircraft conducting simultaneous parallel departures at Centennial Airport, while preserving our operations and ensuring these mitigations do not adversely affect our neighboring communities, the Airport Authority said in a statement.

Preserving operations would allow future pilots like Scott to get back to practicing the skills they need.

Scott now must practice those landings at other airports which are seeing more air traffic as a result.

"If I was only doing maneuvers, it would be a different story. But I need to get landings in as well," Scott said. "I'm not sure if it's going to really delay my entire timeline for training. It's just going to make it a little bit more costly, in my opinion.

The FAA says it's now working on long-term solutions and a monitoring plan for the airport.

"It's out of our hands right now. So we're just hoping for more information soon," Scott said.

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