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she would lose contracts from local colleges, endangering
the business she started in 1998 and the livelihood of her 19
instructors.
Dave Kerner, a Palm Beach County commissioner who
trained to get his pilot’s licence at Lantana, said: “I’d love to
talk to President Trump on the tarmac and show him what’s
going on. It’s a level of devastation for my constituents that is
kind of frightening.”
› Palm Beach International Airport, less than 2.1 nautical
miles from Mar-a-Lago, owes 60 per cent of its traffic to
general aviation. When Mr Trump is in residence, all inbound
flights must first detour to one of five so-called gateway
airports, including Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and
Orlando International Airport in Florida, where aircraft can
undergo the security screening necessary to get clearance
to fly on to Palm Beach.
Doug Carr, a security expert at the National Business
Aviation Association (NBAA), called attention to the steep
drop in traffic at Palm Beach International during the
president’s visits. He said this indicates the planes’ operators
have decided to avoid the area altogether rather than
deal with the hassle and expense of diverting off-course
and having their aircraft, crew and passengers intrusively
searched and vetted.
› Ms Murphy had more – much more – to say about the
businesses impacted by Mr Trump’s disinclination to
stay put in Washington over the weekends. For example, the
companies that handle cleaning, catering and maintenance for
the aircraft are hurting, while flights for every purpose from
sky-diving to wildlife monitoring are now “either forbidden or
require going through an onerous, and often fruitless, approval
process.”
But one of her respondents – Ms Smith, of the flight training
school at Lantana – summed up neatly. Wrote Ms Murphy,
“She said it was as if a cloud had descended over the airport,
similar to when it was discovered that one of the 11 September
hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had rented an airplane there.”
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