WASHINGTON, District of Columbia USA — The Federal Aviation Administration allowed a group of hobbyists to launch model rockets last Saturday into airspace used by planes taking off from Lexington's Bluegrass Airport — even though a local FAA official objected to the launches more than a year before permission was granted.

Air traffic controllers in Lexington said the FAA should not have issued a waiver allowing the Bluegrass Rocketry Society to conduct the launches, some of which involved rockets five feet long.

The controllers said that planes, including commercial aircraft, flew through the launch area about four miles from the airport at the direction of a supervisor and that an errant rocket could have hit one of them.

"You can see it's unsafe," said Randy Harris, president of the Lexington local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the Louisville FAA office should have checked with the Lexington air traffic manager before issuing the waiver.

"That didn't happen in this case," she said.

Asked why the FAA would allow rocket launches near an airport, Brown said: "We try to allow a variety of different uses of the airspace."

She said that she knew of no aircraft that were endangered.

Duff Ortman, the FAA's air traffic manager in Lexington, said in an e-mail that he had opposed the rocket launches for the last two years because of the collision danger they posted.

The waiver was approved by Robert E. Kelly, Jr., an FAA official in Louisville."Mr. Kelly and I did not discuss the waiver prior to its issuance," Ortman said in his e-mail.

Asked about controllers' assertions that he directed them to conduct normal departures through the launch area, Ortman said: "There was no guidance issued by me precluding the controllers from issuing any headings that they deemed necessary."

Harris said the controllers initially directed planes away from the area, but Ortman told them to "put the planes back on track" on the normal departure route over the launch area.

Brown declined to make Ortman and Kelly available for interviews. But she said regardless of the waiver, because Ortman believes the rocket launches present a collision hazard, they will no longer be allowed. She said she did not know whether the waiver would be rescinded.

Harris said the kind of damage a rocket could inflict on a plane depended on the aircraft's size and where it was hit. He said his first concern would be ingestion of a rocket into a jet engine, which would destroy the engine and force an emergency landing.

A rocket also could go through a plane's windshield, injuring the pilot, or hit a spot critical to controlling the aircraft, he said.

The president of the rocket club, Darryl Hankes of Greensburg, said no aircraft were ever in danger.

Copyright © 2007, The Courier-Journal.