Amendment of Restricted Areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C; Fort Gordon, GA

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 73</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2023-0504; Airspace Docket No. 21-ASO-25]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA66</RIN> <SUBJECT>Amendment of Restricted Areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C; Fort Gordon, GA</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action amends restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C at United States (U.S.) Army Installation Management Command (IMCOM) Fort Gordon, GA. The amended airspace aligns the lateral boundaries to encompass the majority of the training complex and amends the vertical divisions for better management to activate only the airspace required to support the Army's training. It also removes restrictions on participating aircraft operations on weekends, flight above 12,000 feet above ground level (AGL), and the requirement that weather minima exceed standard Visual Flight Rules (VFR) criteria. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective date 0901 UTC, November 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A copy of the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), all comments received, this final rule, and all background material may be viewed online at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> using the FAA Docket number. Electronic retrieval help and guidelines are available on the website. It is available 24 hours each day, 365 days each year. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brian Vidis, Rules and Regulations Group, Policy Directorate, Federal Aviation Administration, 600 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20597; telephone: (202) 267-8783. </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 amends restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C at Fort Gordon, GA, to enhance aviation safety and accommodate essential U.S. Army training activities. <HD SOURCE="HD1">History</HD> The FAA published a NPRM for Docket No. FAA-2023-0504 in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (88 FR 21146; April 10, 2023), proposing to amend restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C at Fort Gordon, GA. Interested parties were invited to participate in this rulemaking effort by submitting written comments on the proposal to the FAA. Two comments were received. Two commenters expressed concern that expanding the restricted area airspace toward Daniel Field Airport, GA, would cause aircraft arriving and departing runway 5 and runway 23 at Daniel Field Airport, to the south, to be funneled into a small corridor between restricted areas R-3004A and R-3004B and the Augusta Regional at Bush Field Airport, GA, Class D airspace which may lead to an increase in airspace incursions. Prior to this final rule, the distance between restricted area R-3004A and R-3004B and the western edge of the Augusta Regional at Bush Field Airport Class D airspace was 6.8 nautical miles (NM). The FAA recognizes that when these restricted areas are active, the distance available for aircraft to maneuver between the eastern boundary of restricted area R-3004A and R-3004B and the western edge of the Augusta Regional at Bush Field Airport Class D airspace would be reduced to 3.6 NM. When the restricted areas are active, pilots are not required to navigate between the restricted areas and the Augusta Regional at Bush Field Airport Class D airspace. Pilots can remain further away from R-3004A and R-3004B by flying either above the Augusta Regional at Bush Field Airport Class D airspace, maintain two-way communications with the Augusta Airport Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) and fly though the Augusta Regional at Bush Field Airport Class D airspace, fly above the active portions of the restricted areas, or circumnavigate the restricted areas to the north and west. Additionally, arrivals and departures to the West, North, and East of Daniel Field Airport are unaffected by the expansion of restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C. Two commenters expressed concern that the activation of restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C would restrict the use of the Area Navigation (RNAV) runway 5 approach at the Daniel Field Airport. In a letter of agreement (LOA) between the Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), Augusta ATCT, and Fort Gordon, a recall area has been agreed upon that would return a portion of R-3004 to air traffic control (ATC) in order to facilitate arrival approaches on the RNAV runway 5 approach to the Daniel Field Airport when it is needed. One commenter said that this action would lower the floor of restricted areas R-3004A and R-3004B to such a degree that many pilots would no longer be able to fly under them. The commenter recommends that the current floors of restricted areas R-3004A and R-3004B be retained. The FAA does not agree with retaining the original floor altitudes. Prior to this final rule, restricted area R-3004A extended from the surface to but not including 3,500 feet mean sea level (MSL). This final rule does not lower the floor of restricted area R-3004A as the floor continues to be at the surface. When restricted area R-3004A is active, aircraft are unable to fly under the restricted area. Prior to this final rule restricted area R-3004B was designated from 3,500 feet MSL to but not including 7,000 feet MSL. Although this final rule does lower the floor of restricted area R-3004B from 3,500 feet MSL to 2,500 feet MSL, due to the nature of the training being conducted, restricted area R-3004B is normally only active simultaneously with the activation of restricted area R-3004A, which would not allow aircraft to fly under restricted area R-3004B, regardless of the floor altitude. Additionally, since restricted area R-3004A would contain the majority of day-to-day training requirements, restricted area R-3004B would be activated less frequently. This would have the effect that when only restricted area R-3004A is active, the airspace between 2,500 feet MSL and 3,500 feet MSL would be returned to the National Airspace System (NAS) and would be available for non-participating aircraft use. One commenter expressed concern about the potential negative impact on aircraft conducting civil air ambulance flights, identified by ATC using the callsign “MEDEVAC”, that frequently arrive and depart from Daniel Field airport. In an LOA between the Atlanta ARTCC, Augusta ATCT, and Fort Gordon, provisions are made to allow for ATC to coordinate individual flights, such as civil air ambulance flights, to transit the restricted areas when they are active. As such, the FAA expects minimal impact to civil air ambulance flights. One commenter expressed concern that activation of restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C on Saturdays and Sundays would have a magnified impact on general aviation and flight training users that typically fly on the weekends. The commenter goes on to say that it is critical that the proponent make every effort to release the airspace promptly when it is no longer in use. In accordance with the FAA's joint-use policy, restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C must be returned to the controlling agency and become available for access by nonparticipating aircraft during periods when the airspace is not needed by the using agency for its designated purpose. Because of the joint-use policy, the FAA expects that any unused parts of the restricted areas will be deactivated and made available for use by non-participating aircraft, thus minimizing the impact on the NAS. Subsequent to the FAA's 2023 NPRM publication, the U.S. Army changed the installation name from Fort Gordon to Fort Eisenhower. When the U.S. Army published their Final Environmental Assessment (EA) in 2024, which the FAA has since adopted, the installation name was Fort Eisenhower. However, the U.S. Army has since changed the name from Fort Eisenhower to Fort Gordon. Because the installation's current name is as proposed in the NPRM, there are no installation name differences between the NPRM and the final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Rule</HD> This action amends 14 CFR part 73 by amending restricted areas R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C at Fort Gordon, GA. The three areas share common lateral boundaries that overlay each other. R-3004A extends from the surface to but not including 2,500 feet MSL. R-3004B extends from 2,500 feet MSL to but not including 10,000 feet MSL. R-3004C extends from 10,000 feet MSL to 16,000 feet MSL. These internal altitude subdivisions reduce the need to activate all three restricted areas to accomplish daily training. This provides the flexibility to activate only those restricted area segments required for the planned training events, while leaving the unused segment(s) available for access by other aviation users. This action modifies the southwest boundary so that the boundary is contained within installation property. Additionally, the proposal would expand the lateral limits of restricted area R-3004A, R-3004B, and R-3004C farther to the north and northeast to incorporate the majority of Fort Gordon property. This expansion modifies the lateral boundar ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━