The problem is that our equipment can easily get up into the patterns and the approach and departure lanes. If you know what you are doing then you can avoid those conflicts, but it's quite clear that many of the new breed of hobby pilots don't have a clue. At least this gives the airport operators some warning and the opportunity to advise on locations.
I think it's an appropriate requirement, especially since you can come to a standing agreement with many airports if your flights are clearly never going to cause traffic conflicts.
Disagree for many reasons especially with regards to uncontrolled airports and heliports;
1. it's unenforceable - this comes directly from several FAA PMIs and OPS inspectors I have contact with
2. There's no binding requirement for anyone to call you back
3. If you're in a populated area you shouldn't be flying a manned aircraft under 1000'. If you're 5 miles from your destination airport and you're under 500' in a populated area, you're probably violating FAR 91. The exception would be medical helicopters taking off and landing at an LZ or hospital landing pad.
4. The FAAs airport listing is out of date, has wrong contact information as well as wrong phone numbers
5. Many class G airport operators could care less about cooperating with this. Some may just say "no" for the hell of it (I know one guy who owns a private strip in my area who is very grumpy and will not cooperate with anything he is not forced to do). I know the chief pilot for a major medical helicopter operation, he prefers NOT to be contacted unless you're operating within 1/2 of his helipads.
I could go on.
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