Renton needlessly elbowed out our premier flight school; is space going to more jets?

A google image search of Rainier Flight Services in Renton looks like a college yearbook of happy graduates and their instructors, launching life-changing careers in aviation

Renton has suffered a very sad academic loss this week.  Rainier Flight Services has been training our aspiring aviators in Renton for decades, launching many of our residents into lifetime careers as professional pilots.  Their prices were affordable, and Renton’s youth could earn a pilot’s license for the price of a semester or two of college. Formerly (until last week) headquartered in Renton, they are the biggest and most successful flight school in the Northwest, with major satellite schools in Everett, Tacoma, and Auburn.

Their social media pages look like college yearbooks, replete with photos of happy graduates and their instructors at this key moment in their lives. They take pride in keeping their airplanes up-to-date and well maintained, and they fly them to low-population regions to get their time in, producing minimal negative impacts to Renton.  The business added to our job and tax base along with training our youth;  dozens of instructors and support staff were employed at their headquarters in Renton.

While I was on council they were enthusiastic about staying in our city, and possibly even building a larger building for their popular flight school.  We created a lease that gave them the option to build a new building in 2019, but importantly we did NOT make it a requirement for them.  The lease specifically spelled out the 30-to-40-year term they would get if they built the new building, which might enable them to seek financing.  If they chose not to build  a new building, the terms would need to be renegotiated in good faith, with an appropriate term, maintenance plan and lease rate for their existing building.

This screenshot from the 2019 lease makes it crystal clear that Rainier Flight Services has the OPTION to build, at their discretion

But in August last year, Renton Council was presented with an agenda docket that spun the facts differently, falsely implying the tenant had failed to meet required conditions:

This screenshot from the council agenda docket misleadingly implies Rainier Flight Services was required to construct a new building, falsely implying a violation

Documents show that Rainier Flight Services performed due diligence in evaluating the costs of a new building, but the expense proved prohibitive, especially as the pandemic stalled their classes, inflation raged, and interest rates climbed.

Their existing building has worked fine for decades, as it is built on pilings driven down to firm soil or bedrock.  However some of the surface soil has settled– not surprising since the site was once underwater as part of Lake Washington.  The site needs some leveling to keep the walkways and stairs true.  This work could easily be funded 90% or more with FAA grants if Renton airport management simply made the request, since the building is airport property and Flight Training is a highly valuable service to the FAA.

Reception area at Rainier Flight Services facility in Renton

Countless Renton residents have attended ground school, flight school, and simulator training at Rainier Flight Services at Renton Airport. Many have become professional pilots and airline captains.

But instead of working with Rainier Flight Services to keep the school at our airport, our airport management escalated the pressure on them to construct the new building.  They also began taking prime airplane tie-downs away from them, spreading their aircraft throughout the airport, seemingly as punishment for not building.

Young students taking flying lessons do not have a lot of extra cash, so it is unreasonable that airport management expected them to somehow fund a brand new building in today’s economic climate.  It’s like insisting that Renton High School students pay for their own new high school– the money just isn’t there.

When Rainier Flight Services finally broke the news that they could not rebuild the building, the airport manager put them on a month-to-month lease that required that Renton Flight Services make all future repairs, improvements and upgrades themselves.

Rainier Flight Services provided dozens of living-wage instructor, administrator, and mechanic jobs in Renton; a prize for any city

These were unfair, unsustainable terms.  The city owns the building.  The airport manager is responsible for it’s care.  When the building is being leased on a month-to-month basis, with no long-term guarantee for the tenant,  the airport manager must take care of issues like the roofs, floor slabs, and exterior paving.  According to Renton’s airport leasing policy, it is not acceptable to ask a tenant to make major repairs or upgrades to a publicly-owned building on a month to month lease– this should only be done with a long-term lease.

So Rainier Flight Services left.  And Boeing Field management, recognizing the company’s enormous value, immediately gave them space even though they have a long waiting list.  Renton’s loss is Seattle’s gain.

Renton’s former flight school got a well-deserved hero’s welcome at Boeing Field, where airport leadership jumped them to the front of the line to find space for them. Boeing Field leaders recognized their outsized contribution to the community and to aviation.

Now, where we used to have a beloved flight school, Renton has an empty building, with sinking floors.  Airport Management still wants the whole building replaced by someone else, so that they don’t have to personally do the work securing the grants to make the repairs.

But who has the money to come in in this economy, demolish the existing building,  grade the site, drive in the deep piles, and build an all-new building that will eventually revert to city ownership?  Private jet owners of course!  And as I said in my previous blog entry, they’ve been lined up for decades trying to get into Renton airport.

There is speculation and rumors within the airport community that the site is already being offered to a private jet hangar company, and this better be just rumors.  Because the Renton City Council is responsible for airport leases, and the council MUST be in the driver’s seat for such critical decisions.  I’ve seen nothing on the council agenda about this.  The Council would be wise to engage the Renton Airport Advisory Committee (RAAC) in this work, as the RAAC could have saved the prized flight school, and this committee’s expertise provides the best hope of finding a better use than a jet center for this property.

In my previous blog entry I covered the risk that the addition of private jets causes relative to our airfield length.  The Renton Council must not continue to open the door to more jets on our airfield unless we want the runway to extend to South Second Street in downtown Renton.   How sad and ironic it would be if Boeing Field takes our beloved flight school, and we get their noisy jets, just because our airport leadership did not want to do their job repairing the floor on a building they own.

Author’s note:  I’ve written this entirely on my own, as a renton resident, and former council member who greatly values this business and personally approved their 2019 lease agreement.  Rainier Flight Services did not participate in any way in preparation of this material.