![\"A](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/FAA-pix.jpg\")
<\/a>When asked to identify the C-130 planes, Cornelison acknowledged the concerns the community may have but indicated it would be \u201cpremature\u201d to release any specific information at this time.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth Ports Authority declined to comment on the near-miss report because the event is \u201cnot within their jurisdiction,\u201d according to executive director Maryann Lizama yesterday.<\/p>\n
She indicated that because the event occurred between civilian and military aircraft \u201cin the air,\u201d CPA has no way to ascertain the events that took place.<\/p>\n
She indicated that this would fall under the FAA\u2019s jurisdiction. \u201cI trust that an investigation should have already commenced,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The incident reportedly happened as a Star Marianas pilot was about 1 mile offshore coming across the channel from Saipan toward Tinian. The pilot was flying passengers at the 1,500 feet standard altitude and routing flown by Star Marianas, and was still within the Saipan tower\u2019s airspace, or Delta airspace, according to Star Marianas.<\/p>\n
The first C-130 was followed by another C-130, which was slightly off the lead C-130\u2019s left wing, it was reported. Both planes had nose-high altitude and were climbing in the pilot\u2019s direction\u2014right through the standard altitude and routing flown by commercial planes between the islands.<\/p>\n
Star Marianas reported the incident to the FAA in Guam as a \u201cnear midair collision,\u201d or NMAC. They assert that both C-130s had violated the requirement to establish communication with the Saipan tower prior to entering the Delta airspace, because both civilian and military were \u201cclearly inside the Delta airspace when the incident occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI called tower and reported that a C-130 was coming at me and stated it passed within about 300 feet of my aircraft and asked if they knew about that aircraft being there. They stated that they had not known and that the aircraft had just called them,\u201d the Star Marianas pilot had said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Unannounced\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Also last Wednesday, another one of Star Marianas\u2019 single-engine Cherokee pilots was \u201csurprised by how close a C-130 passed by him without making any radio announcements for positions or intentions,\u201d according to STAR Marianas president Shaun Christian yesterday.<\/p>\n The C-130 passed with more than 500 feet separation, Christian said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut again [it] was a surprise to our pilot that the military aircraft was not following recommended communication protocols,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Christian also said that on Feb. 17 on Rota, an Australian C-130 had pulled onto the runway while he was on \u201cabout a one half mile final [landing] and 300 feet off the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n The C-130 did this \u201cwithout making any announcements or checking to see if there was anyone in the traffic pattern,\u201d he said. It resulted in Christian having to \u201cgo-around\u201d or essentially reject his landing to avoid any potential collision.<\/p>\n According to Christian, both events happened outside Class D, or Delta airspace, \u201cso there was no regulatory requirement to establish communications with a tower or Guam Center.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut standard [or] recommended best operating practices are to announce your position and your intentions at regular intervals over the established CTAF [Common Traffic Advisory Frequency], which was not being done by the military aircraft in either case,\u201d Christian said.<\/p>\n These incidents come amid reports of increased military presence in the CNMI. The reported military aircraft are believed to have been a part of last month\u2019s Cope North exercise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Federal Aviation Administration will look into the \u201cnear-miss\u201d between civilian and military aircraft last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":193126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,4],"tags":[1733,126,200,1035],"class_list":["post-193125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-local-news","tag-cope-north","tag-faa","tag-military","tag-star-marianas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}