Bruce Odiorne’s search for a landing zone continues
Bruce Odiorne, founder of Durango Flight Tours, stands next to the 1958 Cessna 182 he plans to use for his new business venture, Skydive Durango. This would be Durango’s only skydiving operation if he could only find a place for the skydivers to land. (Nathan Metcalf/Durango Herald)
Someone Anyone who says working in local government is easy has obviously never had to decide whether to allow an up-and-coming company to land skydivers in their town’s only off-leash dog park.
This is the dilemma faced by Bruce Odiorne, a trained pilot and flight instructor who founded two new companies earlier this year: Durango Flight Tours and Sky-dive Durango.
While Durango Flight Tours has taken off, both figuratively and literally, no one has yet jumped out of Odiorne’s cherry-red 1958 Cessna 182 because one thing is missing: a place to land.
To solve this problem, Odiorne approached the city of Durango earlier this summer and asked for permission to allow skydivers to land at Durango’s Off-Leash Dog Park.
Odiorne told city officials in an email, “We will then take people back to Animas Airpark. They will only hang out at the dog park for a few minutes. We don’t need any special equipment and this landing zone is huge for our purposes.”
To support his proposal, Odiorne pointed out that paragliders regularly jump from the cliffs of Smelter Mountain and descend into the area where paragliders are allowed to run free.
In addition, Odiorne said, it is well documented that liability for skydiving accidents almost always lies with the skydiver himself, but rarely with the skydiving company and almost never with the owner of the places from which the skydivers return to earth.
“It has long been known that if you jump out of an airplane, you are liable because you just jumped out of the airplane,” Odiorne said.
Scott McClain, deputy director of the Durango Parks Department, said no one had ever made a request like Odiorne’s during his time with the city, so discussions had to be held with several city departments, including the Durango Police Department and the Durango-La Plata County Airport.
The control panel of Bruce Odiorne’s cherry red 1958 Cessna 182. (Nathan Metcalf/Durango Herald)
McClain said airport officials compared Odiorne’s proposal with other skydiving companies in the area, such as Skydive Moab just across the state line in Moab, Utah.
According to Korey Yost, a member of Skydive Moab’s ground team, almost all of Skydive Moab’s skydivers land near the same location from which they took off – a sprawling field next to Canyonlands Regional Airport.
“For most drop zones, the landing area is right at the airport,” Yost said.
In contrast, the Durango Off-Leash Dog Park is flanked by four lanes of U.S. Highway 160 on one side and the slopes of Smelter Mountain on the other, which raised safety concerns among Durango-La Plata County Airport officials, McClain said.
In that regard, McClain said Durango Police Department officials have expressed concern that rescuers do not have access to the area where skydivers are allowed to walk off-leash, which would be necessary in case a skydiver accidentally clips Smelter Mountain during a descent or experiences a hard landing.
However, according to McClain, the main reason for rejecting Odiorne’s proposal was its incompatibility with the intended use of the area, where dogs would be allowed to run off-leash and dog owners would have to compete for space with skydivers.
“Skydiving sounds like a great activity,” McClain said. “But supporting a private business while cutting the services we provide to other people just didn’t feel right.”
McClain agreed with Odiorne’s argument that liability on the part of the city was not a major concern, but countered his objection regarding paragliders by saying that most paragliding flights take place early in the morning, thus avoiding most land-use conflicts with dog owners.
Although his proposal to create an area where all dogs would be allowed to land off-leash never came to fruition, Odiorne has not given up on his dreams of skydiving in Durango.
Recently, a property owner tentatively agreed to allow Odiorne to land skydivers in a field near Animas Air Park, where Odiorne launches, and is now seeking approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“I think that tourism aspect is why Durango is so successful,” Odiorne said. “There are ziplines, adventure tours, several rafting companies – it just makes sense that skydiving fits into our community.”
