Bader Field used to be the Atlantic City Municipal Airport (KAIY). It’s still there in  the very shadow of the boardwalk casinos, but as an airport, Bader Field is dead. The runways are all closed and a minor league baseball stadium and concert venue dominate the grounds.

Historic Bader Field was the first place ever called an ‘air-port.’ It opened in 1910 and the Civil Air Patrol was founded there in 1941. Glenn Curtiss, Charles Lindbergh and Admiral Richard Byrd flew there, and for three decades it was the site of the Black Pilots Association and the Powder Puff Derby. The first attempt to cross the Atlantic by air (a dirigible) departed from there and during the 1960s and 70s Allegheny Commuter Airlines flew flights to Philadelphia and New York, until Atlantic City International Airport opened at the former Naval Air Station, fifteen miles away.

The airport was 68 years old and operating smoothly when it saw a dramatic increase in charter flights as the first boardwalk casino opened in 1978, less than five miles away. Four engine airplanes carrying 40 passengers were shoe-horned onto the 2,948 foot runway by Resorts International, and in one year (2001) Bader saw 10,683 takeoffs and landings. In 1986 Atlantic City received a grant for improvements from the FAA, along with an obligation to operate the airport for 20 years. But only four years later in 1990, the city appealed to U. S. Senator Frank Lautenberg for legislation that would remove that grant obligation so that the airport could be closed due to ‘unsafe levels of air traffic.’ Others say that the land had become too valuable and a proposal to build 4000 time share condominiums on the airport’s 143 acres was the reason, but in any event Lautenberg’s legislation failed and Bader Field remained opened, even as the city stopped properly maintaining the facilities.

Then in 1996, without consulting the FAA, the city began constructing Sandcastle Stadium near Runway 29/11 on the airport property. A court battle ensued, but after a settlement the stadium opened in 1998. By 2006 less than a dozen aircraft were based at Bader Field,  and transient airplanes accounted for nearly all of the air traffic there.

On May 15, 2005 a Cessna Citation jet bound for the casinos attempted to land at Bader with a 10 knot tailwind. The jet  overran the end of the runway and splashed into the Intracoastal Waterway. All aboard were rescued by a passing boater, but the jet’s right engine was never shut down, and the Citation’s wet and  wild gyrations after all hands abandoned ship were caught on camera. The accident is still a popular video on You Tube.

It’s too late to save Bader Field, which Atlantic City closed as soon as the grant assurances expired, ninety-six years after it opened. But a Casino is being built a few miles away from my home airport, and many of the pilots and aircraft owners here fear that our community airport could repeat Bader’s sad history if we don’t learn from it. Unfortunately, there are some futurists here in Taunton who espouse only tremendous benefits and opportunities from ‘the whole new era’ of the casino. Some of them seem to be putting personal gain ahead of what is best for our airport, for there is certainly money to be made from ‘expansion’  when the gaming industry comes to town.

And to those who say that extending our runway at Taunton to 4,000 feet would never allow jets into our little airport, please consider that after the jet crash at Bader Field, the NTSB found an airport diagram on the control yoke directly in front of the pilot which read “airport closed to jet traffic.”

Proving once again that if you build it they will come.

“Further evidence of the trend to turboprop aircraft replacing piston power.”

That’s what one of my home airport’s commissioners recently said about this picture; a brilliant prediction since the headline hyping Cessna’s new turbo-prop airplane read “proof of a growing trend in aviation,” and many of the popular aviation magazines have been telling us as much for years. Yes, the single-engine turbines are coming!

This commissioner’s business must be doing very well if he is going to buy into a seven-figure turboprop. More power to him. I like the turbines, and I’ll never pass on the chance to fly aboard one of them and see what these remarkable machines can do. The power and sophisticated gadgetry in the panel is amazing! For sure, I’d love to own and fly a sleek new TBM 900, but my 1964 Cherokee 180 is the best that I can do right now, and it serves my flying needs perfectly. It’s also safe to say that not many of the pilots at Taunton Municipal Airport will be trading in their Pipers and Cessnas for turboprops any time soon, no matter what the industry gurus divine in their crystal balls. When our airplanes finally wear out, it’s much more likely we’ll be building and flying Van’s RVs, Zeniths and other homebuilt ships at a fraction of the cost.

I think that this local fascination with the presumed future of aviation is really about Taunton’s nascent casino, which is being built less than three miles from our airport. You’ve seen the gaming industry commercials, with the beautiful young couples spinning the roulette wheel to a jazzy guitar riff, dressed to the nines for drinking and dining and going to shows. Those commercials are a far cry from reality, but there’s no doubt that in addition to the multi-million dollar airplanes, “a whole new era” at Taunton would see more Polo, Ralph Lauren and European sports cars around the flight line, in contrast to the pickup truck and dungaree look which we currently enjoy.

Some of the most avid pilots at Taunton smell plenty of jet fuel when they’re working, flying Boeings 737s, Air Force C-130s and Citation jets, but they keep their personal airplanes at our community airport for the “grass roots” experience of barbeque grills and carefree kids on bikes and J-3 Cubs in the pattern. It would be a shame to lose that to some up-tight commercial airport to serve the casino.

It’s not that I don’t want aviation to progress. There’s plenty of room for the new turbines, as long as they don’t build their corporate hangars on the grass/gravel crosswind runway that our tail-draggers and classic airplanes often use. Real progress would be getting self-serve fuel and removing the old phone poles and downed tree branches laying around. Real progress would be improving access to our airport so that anyone interested in flying airplanes could get through the fences and join the fun.  And don’t forget that New Bedford already has two long runways, instrument approaches, jet fuel and glitzy facilities for the high-rollers, all within fifteen miles of Taunton.