Does the Helijet contract not replace a VIH / Cougar 222?
I believe so but perhaps there is a Canadian-based member who can confirm this!
PETITION TO RE-OPEN SOUTH CAPITOL STREET HELIPORT
WASHINGTON, DC — November 11
The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released a letter to Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) Administrator John Pistole requesting that the TSA re-open the South Capitol Street Heliport (SCSH), the only publicly accessible heliport in the city, which the TSA shut down to public access in 2005 after permitting the heliport to operate with limited public access for several years after 9/11.
In her letter she argued that shutting down the very heliport that government agencies used as a command center on September 11 2001 was an affront to common sense, service, commercial necessity, and basic justice. Every heliport in the country opened shortly after 9/11, including those in New York City where the terrorist attacks occurred.
The new proposal includes a two-hour advance notice for requests to land here, limited to only non-stop flights initially, and only from five heliports. Opened in 1998, the heliport brought significant business to the District and region, peaking at 41 corporate operators, including motion picture industry helicopters, many business aviation clients, emergency management operators and the Metropolitan Police Department, which still uses SCSH as its aircraft base. In the aftermath of 9/11, TSA imposed a waiver program, significantly reducing the number of helicopter flights to the District by requiring that pilots get waivers and report all passengers, crew and security personnel aboard all flights whenever they sought to fly to the District.
Then, without any warning or explanation, the TSA abruptly halted even the limited waiver program flights and prohibited all commercial operations altogether, without any due process, input in the decision from the heliport or its users, means to appeal, or even so much as an explanation. Norton wrote, “Despite SCSH’s generous and vital assistance to first responders and others on and after 9/11, and its steadfast pursuit of an appeal, SCSH remains closed nearly ten years after 9/11 except for use by law enforcement, military and medical evacuation traffic.” She said that, “it amounted to a government takeover of a private facility without compensation, and should have been unthinkable for our government to adopt practices characteristic of authoritarian government, despite the willingness of the heliport to submit to whatever structures and regulations the government chose to impose on them, and then to turn around and use the facility for its own government purposes.”
Norton is particularly pressing now to reopen the heliport in light of the economic downturn. With the region improving economically, she believes that the heliport could boost recovery of the city and the region. She intends to enlist her colleagues as well in this effort.