National Park Service officials are seeking public input on whether Chicken Strip should continue to be used by pilots/NPS
For nearly a quarter-century the Chicken Strip airfield at Death Valley National Park has been operating illegally. Now park officials are seeking public input on whether the strip should be deemed a legal use.
Chicken Strip is famous among recreational pilots for its dramatic desert scenery and the challenges it poses to small plane pilots. However, the landing strip’s ongoing use is a non-enforced violation of National Park Service regulations.
The Saline Valley Warm Springs Airfield, commonly known as Chicken Strip, is an unpaved landing strip near Saline Valley Warm Springs that has been in use for decades. However, when the area was added to Death Valley National Park in 1994, landing at the Chicken Strip became illegal by default regulations restricting the operation of aircraft on NPS lands.
“This proposed special regulation is really a deregulation,” explained Death Valley Superintendent Mike Reynolds. “It would remove any question about the legality of the airfield’s use by visitors. We believe this is a common sense approach that corrects a regulatory technicality.”
Chicken Strip has been used by an average of 88 planes per year in recent years. Some pilots use it to access the nearby Warm Springs. Others are drawn by the challenge of the airstrip itself.
Volunteers with the Recreation Aviation Foundation maintain the airstrip at no cost to the taxpayers. “The RAF and the NPS have been successfully partnering for nearly ten years to make access to [the Chicken Strip] safe and available to the aviation community,” said RAF board chairman John McKenna.
The NPS seeks public input on whether the Chicken Strip should be a legal airstrip. Public comments are due by November 19. Comments should reference Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) 1024-AE48, and will only be accepted online at https://www.regulations.gov or by mail to: Death Valley National Park, P.O. Box 579, Death Valley, CA 92328. Comments received may be posted without change to https://www.regulations.gov, including any personal information provided.
Comments
It is just a bad situation when the park service takes over land that has a pre-existing airstrip and it is then closed because it violates the park rules of not allowing airstrips. This is in direct conflict with another park rule that says that they must maintain the area in a similar condition to it was when they first took it over. Pre-existing strips should be allowed to continue to exist and be used unless they truly do represent a safety problem. Air strips are an important resource that we must keep. They provide both a place for planes to land in an emergency, and they allow quick access to the area in case of an emergency on the ground. Given the situation with the Chicken Strip, calling it illegal in the first place is questionable because of conflicting rules.
Chicken Strip is not shown on the FAA sectional chart. (Sectionals are maps for pilot navigation under visual flight conditions.) So the FAA doesn't recognize it as even an emergency strip. There are many such landing strips throughout the Southwest. The only way a pilot experiencing an emergency could find the place would be through previous knowledge or just dumb luck.
great to another option for small airplane access to this beautiful national park.
How exactly is it "illegal"?