WASHINGTON — Pilots of the aircraft that has been leading nine young whooping cranes to a winter home in Florida have been granted an exemption by regulators to continue their journey.
The Federal Aviation Administration gave the waiver to Operation Migration, a group trying to re-establish an Eastern flyway by teaching young whooping cranes how to make the flight.
Operation Migration ran into trouble with the FAA because it pays salaries to pilots. “Sport planes,” a category that sometimes includes aircraft of exotic design, can be flown only for personal use.
FAA officials notified the conservation group’s pilots in late November that the agency had opened an investigation. Just before Christmas, Operation Migration voluntarily grounded the plane and the birds in northwestern Alabama — more than half way to their destination.
Joe Duff, an Operation Migration co-founder and one of the pilots, said more than 1,400 people have signed an online petition asking that the flight be allowed to continue.
“We’re very pleased. This is probably a record for turning around a waiver,” Duff said.
“The FAA will work with Operation Migration to develop a more comprehensive, long-term solution,” an agency statement said.
Duff said he has sympathy for FAA officials, who don’t want to “open the floodgates” to potentially risky uses of ultralight aircraft.
“There are all kinds of things people would like to do in sports aircraft that they aren’t designed to do,” Duff said.
