Star Tribune
Possible flight path changes at MSP Airport rekindle noise worries
The Federal Aviation Administration is looking to change the technology used to direct planes in and out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, raising questions of whether flight paths could change and if the FAA will hear the concerns of residents below.
The Metropolitan Airports Commission’s Noise Oversight Committee, made up of officials from various nearby cities, is forming an outreach plan to let residents know what the FAA wants to do. The group aims to avoid the missteps the commission made the last time the FAA proposed consolidating flight paths.
“The last thing you want is for the FAA to get ahead of the communities,” said Chris Swanson, a Richfield city staffer who sits on the noise committee.
A decade ago, the FAA proposed using satellite navigation to route more planes into narrower flight paths. Residents along those paths were outraged, especially because they felt ignored.
“With no real input from the communities, it seemed like this was going to be run through,” said Bob Kane, an Edina resident who was among dozens protesting the changes in the early 2010s.
Edina and southwest Minneapolis residents mobilized against the changes in flight paths: Chain emails pinged around neighborhood groups, and residents packed airport commission meetings.
Richfield residents had supported the changes that would have routed more planes over Crosstown Hwy. 62, but Edina residents worried the plan would send more planes their way.
“They successfully mobilized and we were drowned out,” Pam Dmytrenko, then Richfield’s assistant city manager, told the Star Tribune in 2012.
After the outcry, airport officials put the navigation system updates on hold.
In other cities, updated navigation systems have meant new flight paths over neighborhoods unaccustomed to flight noise. Now, the FAA says it’s time to move to the new navigation system here. It could be in place by the summer of 2025.
The Airports Commission and city leaders are trying to figure out how to get the word out about what the FAA has planned and how to get feedback from a broad cross-section of residents, not just those who can attend midmorning meetings of the noise committee to offer comments.
Swanson said Richfield wants to make sure people know what the FAA proposes next year. If outreach is successful, he said, communities won’t be caught off-guard and could be prepared to let the airport commission and the FAA know what they think.
The new navigation system and procedures are becoming standard at larger airports.
“The FAA is continually modernizing the National Airspace System to improve safety and efficiency,” a statement from the agency read.
Edina City Manager Scott Neal said he hoped the technology — and the possibility of new flight paths — will mean noise is spread out across the metro, both west and east of the airport.
Neal said Edina residents’ protests were part of stopping the new navigation system and route changes a decade ago. He said the routes needed further study back then. But he knew the issue would come up again. “We’re ready for a conversation this time,” Neal said.
Worried residents like Kane hope the airport commission and FAA are ready to talk, too.
The airport commission and FAA “have to not only say they’re engaging with community stakeholders but truly listen and not just saying they’re listening … [to] truly understand the lives of the people underneath,” he said.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
