Question

Grand Teton National Park has become a popular U.S. destination for heli-skiing, with commercial helicopter operators landing to deliver and retrieve skiers and snowboarders in locations otherwise inaccessible or accessible only with great physical difficulty. Other users of the park's back country have begun to complain to the National Park Service (NPS), that the noise of the helicopters has become almost continual in some areas, where it is destroying the tranquility of the back country experience and driving the wildlife away. Analyze whether the NPS, acting on its own authority, can legally ban helicopters from landing and taking off at locations within the park? Identify the applicable governmental power and explain your legal reasoning clearly in proper legal terminology. Analyze whether the NPS, acting on its own authority, can legally ban helicopters from flying low over the park? Identify the applicable law and its source and explain your legal reasoning clearly in proper legal terminology. If you determined that the NPS could not, acting on its own authority, accomplish either of both of the foregoing, then identify the law and procedures the NPS and any other government agency involved would be required to follow in order to legally accomplish the task(s), explaining your reasoning clearly in proper legal terminology.

Answer 1

Anything pertaining to aviation should not interfere with National Park Services e.g helicopter landings etc. FAA is the concerned agency that decide the location for helipad construction, precautions and standard of the built. No one knows when the helicopter will be used in National park. Helicopter can be used for search, rescue and research purpose. There must me provision for take off and landing in remote areas otherwise there will be a great difficulty in search and rescue operations, park maintenance. Transportation will be a big challenge in such remote places without helicopter. The NPS has no jurisdiction when it comes to FFA protocol. There should not be any interfere between NPS and FFA.