‘Air’ on side of convenience: Medical Air crews should be able to keep flying out of town

The University’s Medical Air Operations is moving from Chapel Hill to Raleigh-Durham International Airport at the end of the month.

For medical faculty, working for this service is already painfully inconvenient — often taking up a full business day — but it will become even more of a hassle with the upcoming move.

By flying medical faculty to counties across the state, the operation provides access to specialized care to segments of North Carolina that otherwise wouldn’t have it.

The doctors who volunteer to travel with Medical Air often depart early in the morning and return in the evening, seeing dozens of patients during the day.

The move will create an extra headache for these faculty, tacking on an extra 30 minutes or more of a commute for some. And while that might not seem like much, when you consider that Medical Air makes several flights every day, those minutes add up.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that Horace Williams Airport, though it will eventually close, will likely stay open for at least another year.

But the University is eager to have Medical Air use the recently-completed hangar in Raleigh, which it built to coincide with the closure of the Chapel Hill airport. Carolina North projects were scheduled to be built on the land used by Horace Williams Airport, but state funds have largely dried up.

It will probably be at least a year before the airport closes for construction of a research center — and even longer before major projects go up.

It’s understandable for the University to want to use the new facility, but it is wrong to needlessly inconvenience the medical faculty.

And these same faculty should not be punished for the planning failures of the University administration.

It’s a no-win situation for the University, but there is a suitable compromise that should be considered.

The construction of the Raleigh facility does not necessitate a total move of all airplanes and supplies from Chapel Hill to Raleigh.

Rather, a few of UNC’s six planes should be left in Chapel Hill along with whatever else it takes to supply a handful of flights per week. This way, the medical faculty most inconvenienced will still be able to fly out of Chapel Hill.

The University will still be able to use the new facility, while also rewarding the tireless work of its pilots and medical faculty by making it as convenient as possible for them to continue to do their jobs.

It has become clear that Orange County residents do not want the University to build another airport or to keep the old one open, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t use Horace Williams Airport while it’s still in business.

It would be a shame for the University’s trademark aviation service to fully relocate in the final years of Chapel Hill’s own airport.