FORUMS & LETTERS

Opinion


Heads Up!
By Rodrigo Treviño May 23, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

It seems to be the curse of San Miguel to attract people obsessed with destroying its image and quality of life. To the long list of greedy developers, unscrupulous politicians, incompetent city planners and bad architects, now we have to add some “Ugly American” private pilots who want to bring their flying circus to San Miguel.

In fact, there have been private pilots coming to San Miguel for a long time. However, in the past they exercised self-restraint to keep their noisy aircraft from flying over populated areas. However, this has changed recently.

We have all noticed a significant increase in the number of low-flying aircraft over San Miguel. Helicopters, ultra-lights and small planes now routinely fly over our homes with complete disregard for the noise pollution they create and the safety of the people on the ground. Unfortunately, this is just a teaser of things to come. Some pilots are asking the city to improve the airstrip near city hall. Their claim is that with an improved airstrip it would be easier to handle helicopter evacuations and medical emergencies. This argument is, of course, rather silly. For an emergency evacuation a helicopter can be flown from Celaya in less time than would be required to prepare the patient for the trip. Furthermore, why would we need a runway for a helicopter?

Another argument is that there is no airplane fuel at nearby airports in Celaya, León and Querétaro. This is hard to believe given that these airports already support commercial aircraft operations. Also, they are all connected through major roads and pipelines to the Salamanca and Tula refineries. It is certainly easier, cheaper and safer to transport fuel to Celaya than to San Miguel.

Let us at least be honest: the real intention of the airport expansion is to start commercial flight activities, including a flight school and air tours over the city. One major attraction is that tourists would be willing to pay to fly over the city (to see the Parroquia and the thousands of tinacos that make up the city landscape seen from the air). The other attraction is that the airspace over San Miguel is not regulated. That is, in the absence of any traffic control, pilots are free to fly however, whenever and wherever they want.

Last year, there was even talk of building a bigger airport (capable of receiving private jets) between San Miguel and Dolores. It must be a sobering thought for the people developing Candelaria, La Loma, Los Labradores and Las Ventanas that their investment properties may be on the flight path of an active runway. Perhaps they should look at the low property values near airports. Investors planning major developments on the Salida a Querétaro should also pay a lot of attention to how the present airstrip is developed, as this would affect the value of their investments. 

Sadly, commercial aircraft activities have already started. Perhaps you noticed that on April 30 a small plane spent about 45 minutes circling over the city doing flight maneuvers such as turns and rolls. This looked suspiciously like a flying lesson. It could have been done over sparsely populated areas, but the pilot probably thought it would be more charming to do it over the center of San Miguel. This past week, a small plane circled the city every morning, probably with passengers taking pictures of the Parroquia (and the tinacos). Do we really need and want this kind of activity over our homes? Obviously, the resulting noise pollution would be a big loss for San Miguel in order to benefit a handful of pilots who want to make a fast buck at the expense of our quality of life and property values. Let us keep in mind that tourists who really want to fly over the city already have the option of taking a balloon ride, which is quieter and more picturesque. There is no need for noisy helicopters and planes to 
spoil the beautiful skies of San Miguel.

The authorities and residents of San Miguel should work together to bring order over the skies above our town. This would mean:


1) Forcing all commercial flight operations to use the better-developed airports in Celaya, Querétaro and León. These airports have better infrastructure and well-developed traffic control and flight patterns that protect the safety of the pilots and of the people on the ground. 

2) Requiring that private pilots agree on flight patterns near San Miguel that limit the flights over populated areas.

3) Denying permits for runway expansions or new airports. There are existing airports in Querétaro, Celaya and León with the capacity to handle the existing traffic coming to San Miguel.

Using one of those strange arguments posited in San Miguel to justify any and all bad ideas, one pilot stated that tourism would drop unless a better airport was built within a 10-minute drive to San Miguel. Of course, this argument makes very little sense. There are very few tourists flying to San Miguel in their own private planes. Also, basically all private pilots coming to San Miguel come from the United States, where private pilots usually need to drive over one hour to get to airfields outside of the traffic control areas that exist over most citie. So, these pilots are willing to drive more than one hour to get to their planes in the US but unwilling to drive more than 10 minutes on the San Miguel side? (The airport in Celaya is only 40 minutes away!) What is next? An airfield next to the Jardín so private pilots can get off the plane, buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and take off again to continue flying over our homes?

Rodrigo A. Treviño Lozano is a native of Monterrey, Mexico. He has studied, lived and worked in several countries and is interested in the international business environment and multicultural experiences. He lives in San Miguel, runs an engineering company and helps organize cultural and charitable events in the area.



The opinions expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not reflect those of Atención San Miguel or the publishers, the Biblioteca Pública.



Letters



Editor,

I am writing to you about one our volunteers and to ask for your help.

Claudia James has been a volunteer since the beginning, and presently she is seriously ill in De La Fe Hospital. She is in intensive care and on a ventilator. She has no insurance and her bills are very high and mounting.

We are appealing to those of you who would like to help support Claudia by donating as much as you can. We are suggesting a minimum of $250 pesos, but any amount would be so gratefully accepted.

All donations can be made in the following two ways:

Deposit money into Claudia’s account at Monex; just go to Monex’s courtyard office on Mesones, and ask for Marcela Zavala Taylor—she knows what to do; or deliver your donation to the Hospice office, calle Manuel Rocha 35 in La Lejona.

If you are writing a check, please write “Al Portador” on the “Pay to the Order of” line.

I send in advance, a HUGE Thank You to all of you for donating, and please keep Claudia in your thoughts and prayers.

With much gratitude,

Anne Howells
Volunteer Coordinator
Hospice San Miguel, A.C.

Editor,

Please pass this on to the appropriate person so this story can get told. My husband and I have a home on Aldama, near Terraplen . On Thurs. night, my husband and I went to bed around ten o’clock with our fan turned on high so as to keep cool and dull the street noises. We have a typical colonial style home with a central garden with living spaces on either side and a casita in the back. There are two bedrooms upstairs, the master being one of them where we were sleeping that night. The main front door was securely locked as were all the windows to the street. Feeling nothing but safe and secure and lulled by the sounds of rain that night, we slept peacefully and awoke to another beautiful morning in San Miguel. Until that is, we discovered that things were strange in the house that morning and that my purse, that I had left in the kitchen, had been opened and all my money was gone. My husband had left his brief case in his office, which was downstairs as well, and the burglar/burglars had opened it and gone  completely through it as well. All of his American money and packets of pesos that were to be used for salaries in the upcoming months were stolen. His new iPhone was also stolen, but the mexican cell phones were left. As I started looking around a bit more, I discovered all the doors ajar in every one of the rooms downstairs as well as all cabinets left open wide. I looked down on the marble floors in our outdoor sala to discover perfectly formed muddy footprints that could be tracked back to the garden where he had apparently come over the back or side wall of the adjacent home, landed on the moist dirt of the garden to begin his work, all while we were sleeping so soundly. With his muddy footprints, it was both easy and eery to trace his work through every room in the house. He had gone through the entire house after the rain that night, had taken approximately US$4000 worth of cash and items that he could stuff in his pockets... all while we slept so well. We are not sure if he came upstairs into our room only to find us asleep, but it appeared that he did not look through our things in our room. That thought alone is a very unsettling thought. All of our doors that open onto the gardens from the house were left unlocked as we have always left them since we have been coming to San Miguel. We spent the entire day with police and filed charges at the district attorney’s office. They also came to the house to remove fingerprints and footprints in hopes of finding out who the person/s are. We are installing an alarm system to “secure our borders” around the perimeter, and of course, locking all interior doors from now on. With such a successful haul, I would suspect that the burglar/burglars will try this again, if he hadn’t already done this a time or two before this. I am writing to share this so that our neighbors and other home owners/visitors are aware of how easy it is to not only lose your money and your valuables, but also your sense of security in your own home. I hope this encourages others to “tighten” up, lock up , so that you can sleep peacefully. I know we won’t for a long time.

Lynn James
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