Smithville Closes Airport Park Over Safety Concerns

Smithville city officials have decided to close Airport Park along Allen’s Chapel Road.

Municipal Airport Manager Joe Johnson said the decision was made due to safety concerns with incoming plane traffic.

“They come over the park at about a couple hundred feet,” Johnson said, “and we’ve had concerns and so has the FAA and the state if something were to happen to the airplane coming in and losing the engine. If it had to go down and there were a lot of kids in the park playing ball… we’ve been concerned about that over the last couple of years.”

According to Johnson, two incidents have occurred at the airport within the last four years. The first involved a plane that ran out of fuel and landed within the park while children were playing on the opposite end, although nobody was hurt.

The second and most recent incident came last October when a plane lost power on the runway.

“We had an airplane take-off, lose its engine, came back down on the runway and didn’t have enough room to land,” Johnson said. “[The pilot] slid off the end of the runway and he happened to be going the other way from the park. But had he been going towards the park, he would’ve slid into the park and anyone that had have been there would’ve got hurt.”

Johnson said the park’s closure will ultimately come as a benefit to residents who live near the airport.

“We’ would have loved for it to have been on the side of the runway where low-flying aircraft wasn’t,” Johnson said. “It’s been there for years and since the airport has expanded and got more and more traffic, it’s gotten more and more dangerous. We’re getting more jet traffic in and… it’s not a good place for a park and kids to be playing ball.”

Johnson said playground equipment from Airport Park will be relocated to other parks around Smithville.