Modification of Class E Airspace; Battle Mountain Airport, Battle Mountain, NV

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 71</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2099; Airspace Docket No. 24-AWP-105]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA66</RIN> <SUBJECT>Modification of Class E Airspace; Battle Mountain Airport, Battle Mountain, NV</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action revises a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on January 7, 2025. As revised, this action proposes to modify the Class E airspace area designated as surface area, modify the Class E airspace area designated as an extension to a Class D or Class E surface area, and modify the Class E airspace extending upward from 700 feet or more above the surface of the earth at Battle Mountain Airport, Battle Mountain, NV. Additionally, this action proposes administrative amendments to update the airport's existing Class E airspace legal descriptions. These actions would support the safety and management of instrument flight rules (IFR) operations at the airport. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Send comments identified by FAA Docket No. FAA-2024-2099 and Airspace Docket No. 24-AWP-105 using any of the following methods: *  <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the online instructions for sending your comments electronically. *  <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send comments to Docket Operations, M-30; U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Room W12-140, West Building Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001. *  <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> Take comments to Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. *  <E T="03">Fax:</E> Fax comments to Docket Operations at (202) 493-2251. <E T="03">Docket:</E> Background documents or comments received may be read at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> at any time. Follow the online instructions for accessing the docket or go to the Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. FAA Order JO 7400.11J, Airspace Designations and Reporting Points, and subsequent amendments can be viewed online at <E T="03">www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/.</E> You may also contact the Rules and Regulations Group, Policy Directorate, Federal Aviation Administration, 600 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20597; telephone: (202) 267-8783. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nathan A. Chaffman, Federal Aviation Administration, Western Service Center, Operations Support Group, 2200 S 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198; telephone (206) 231-3460. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> The FAA's authority to issue rules regarding aviation safety is found in Title 49 of the United States Code. Subtitle I, Section 106 describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII, Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the agency's authority. This rulemaking is promulgated under the authority described in Subtitle VII, Part A, Subpart I, Section 40103. Under that section, the FAA is charged with prescribing regulations to assign the use of the airspace necessary to ensure the safety of aircraft and the efficient use of airspace. This regulation is within the scope of that authority as it would modify Class E airspace at Battle Mountain Airport, Battle Mountain, NV, to support IFR operations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments Invited</HD> The FAA invites interested persons to participate in this rulemaking by submitting written comments, data, or views. Comments are specifically invited on the overall regulatory, aeronautical, economic, environmental, and energy-related aspects of the proposal. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the proposal, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include supporting data. To ensure the docket does not contain duplicate comments, commenters should submit only one time if comments are filed electronically, or commenters should send only one copy of written comments if comments are filed in writing. The FAA will file in the docket all comments it receives, as well as a report summarizing each substantive public contact with FAA personnel concerning this proposed rulemaking. Before acting on this proposal, the FAA will consider all comments it receives on or before the closing date for comments. The FAA will consider comments filed after the comment period has closed if it is possible to do so without incurring expense or delay. The FAA may change this proposal in light of the comments it receives. <E T="03">Privacy:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Availability of Rulemaking Documents</HD> An electronic copy of this document may be downloaded through the internet at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Recently published rulemaking documents can also be accessed through the FAA's web page at <E T="03">www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/airspace_amendments/.</E> You may review the public docket containing the proposal, any comments received and any final disposition in person in the Dockets Operations office (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section for address, phone number, and hours of operations). An informal docket may also be examined during normal business hours at the office at the Northwest Mountain Regional Office of the Federal Aviation Administration, Air Traffic Organization, Western Service Center, Operations Support Group, 2200 S 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Incorporation by Reference</HD> Class E2, E4, and E5 airspace designations are published in paragraphs 6002, 6004, and 6005, respectively, of FAA Order JO 7400.11, Airspace Designations and Reporting Points, which is incorporated by reference in 14 CFR 71.1 on an annual basis. This document proposes to amend the current version of that order, FAA Order JO 7400.11J, dated July 31, 2024 and effective September 15, 2024. These updates would be published in the next update to FAA Order JO 7400.11. FAA Order JO 7400.11J is publicly available as listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. FAA Order JO 7400.11J lists Class A, B, C, D, and E airspace areas, air traffic service routes, and reporting points. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The FAA published an NPRM in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> for FAA-2024-2099 (90 FR 1050; January 7, 2025) to modify Class E airspace at Battle Mountain Airport, Battle Mountain, NV. Subsequent to that publication, the FAA discovered a final rule published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> for FAA-2019-0786 (85 FR 18870; April 3, 2020), which had inadvertently never been recorded within JO 7400.11, <E T="03">Airspace Designations and Reporting Points.</E> The discovery of the above-mentioned final rule does not alter the intentions of the original proposal, but it does necessitate modifications to the verbiage used to describe the FAA's proposed actions. The proposed modifications to the Class E airspace extending upward from 700 feet above the surface are now described in relation to the final rule for FAA-2019-0786 (85 FR 18870; April 3, 2020), and the proposed action for the Class E airspace area designated as an extension to a Class E Surface Area airspace area now reads “AMENDED” instead of “NEW.” Additionally, the FAA identified that the NPRM airspace docket number was incorrect; “24-ANM-105” should have been “24-AWP-105” to reflect the airport's inclusion within the FAA's Western-Pacific Region. This is an administrative docket number used by the FAA to identify airspace actions. The docket number (FAA-2024-2099) used by the public to access the docket on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> is correct and remains the same. This SNPRM updates the FAA's proposal to correct these errors. <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Proposal</HD> This action is a revision to an NPRM published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on January 7, 2025 (90 FR 1050). As revised, The FAA is proposing an amendment to 14 CFR part 71 to modify the Class E airspace area designated as surface area, modify the Class E airspace area designated as an extension to a Class D or Class E surface area, modify the Class E airspace extending upward from 700 feet above the surface of the earth, and remove Class E airspace extending upward from 1,200 feet above the surface at Battle Mountain Airport, Battle Mountain, NV. The Class E airspace area designated as surface area should be expanded from a 4.2-mile radius to a 4.4-mile radius and have a 0.1-mile extension to the southwest of the airport to more appropriately contain departing IFR aircraft executing the Runway (RWY) 22 obstacle departure procedure (ODP) while between the surface and the base of adjacent controlled airspace. In addition, the Class E airspace designated as an extension to a Class D or Class E surface area should ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━