Residents Under Flight Paths Live With Fear : Midair Crash Intensifies Anxiety Over What Could Fall From the Sky

Steve and Kathryn Link had just told friends the “odds were in our favor” against another airplane disaster in their Newport Beach community last Sunday when the radio crackled with news of a midair crash.

Fearing the worst, the couple turned up the car radio and sped down the Santa Ana Freeway in silence toward their Dover Shores home, which was gutted in a fire two years ago when hot metal parts fell off a jet leaving John Wayne Airport.

They soon learned that the midair crash occurred miles away over Cerritos. But the old fear had returned with a vengeance.

“It intensified my anxiety,” said Kathryn Link, 34. “You kind of live in denial after something like this happens to you,” she said, pointing to the rebuilt two-story home overlooking Upper Newport Bay.

Potential for Danger

“But this crash (in Cerritos) makes us realize all over again that we live in the flight pattern of a major airport and there is always a potential for danger.”

In fact, the skies over Orange County, especially around John Wayne Airport, are among the busiest in Southern California. The airport is bulging with ever-increasing numbers of commercial jets, business jets and general aviation planes clamoring for access.

At the same time, there is not the same degree of regulation as that which governs air travel in the corridors approaching Los Angeles International Airport, and pilots say the skies over Orange County may be more dangerous.

Over parts of northeast Santa Ana, Orange and Tustin, incoming jets from the north, south and east converge on the critical final approach path to John Wayne Airport at about 4,000 feet, mixing with small planes flying at the same altitude.

It is at the nexus of the Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Garden Grove freeways where there is the greatest likelihood of a midair collision, many pilots say.

But others say disasters are just as likely in two other areas. The first is over Seal Beach and Huntington Harbour, where traffic from Meadowlark Airport, Long Beach Airport and the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center mixes with air traffic crisscrossing the area. The second is the Dana Point-El Toro corridor, where military transports and fast-moving fighter planes cross recreational flying routes.

“You think about it, that it could happen here,” said Tracy Smith, 22, an advertising agency accounts assistant who was raised in the family home on Galaxy Drive in Dover Shores, where jets scream overhead every five or 10 minutes.

“Until it hits home, people aren’t going to think twice about it,” she said.

A neighbor down the street worries that the skies are so crowded and the controllers so “overloaded” that he flies his own private plane less.

“I won’t go out there and take a spin around just for the fun of it anymore,” said the 44-year-old import-export businessman, who did not want to be named.

“Given the choice, I fly early Sunday mornings, when there is the least traffic, and I would plan my return to John Wayne Airport at a time when it is not busy,” he said.

As a veteran pilot, he said he is well aware of the hazards of living under the flight path of departing planes.

“The most critical time is on takeoff, when a plane is gaining altitude. If there is a sudden power loss or a serious mechanical malfunction, there is usually no option to turn around. The plane would have to crash,” the man said between the screams of jet engines overhead.

“That thought weighs very heavily on most of my neighbors. I know that sooner or later there is going to be a major accident here, and that worries me.”

Over Newport Beach, the risk is not so much of a midair collision like that of the Aeromexico DC-9 and single-engine Piper Cherokee Archer II on Aug. 31. Commercial jets climb at such speeds and such a steep incline that they are well above most “Sunday pilots,” as recreational fliers are sometimes called.

Crash on Takeoff

It is more likely that a lone aircraft would crash on takeoff or lose engine parts, as happened at about 1 p.m. on Sept. 28, 1984, when a Republic Airlines jet malfunctioned and dropped a trail of searing hot metal parts that started a fire on the Links’ roof. The blaze gutted the inside of their house and burned half a dozen other homes on Santiago Drive in Dover Shores.

Still, on any given day, airline pilots taking off from John Wayne Airport are treated to a controller’s advisory refrain: “Numerous targets in your area, altitude unknown.”

An FAA report, released last week, of 59 near misses over Orange County since 1981 “is shy by about 300%,” the import-export businessman said. “Why? Because most of them don’t get reported.”

It is the final approach to John Wayne over the Santa Ana-Tustin area that worries the businessman most. “Everybody is flying at the same altitude, coming from all different directions. Almost certainly there will be a crash there unless something is done to require coding altimeters (to signal traffic controllers with the planes’ altitude and location) and beefing up the staff of our air traffic controllers.”

“In comparison to the life lost, it can’t cost that much,” he said.

Renewed Fear

Tustin residents who live just east of the Costa Mesa Freeway also are directly under the flight path of military aircraft from El Toro and Tustin Marine Corps air stations. And since the Cerritos crash, some have felt a renewed fear.

“Every time I hear one overhead, I get a knot in my stomach,” Lorraine D. Karels said. “I have nightmares, where I get up to look outside the window and see a plane skimming trees.”

Her husband, Dean R. Karels, said he often sees smaller, private planes cross the flight paths of big commercial jets. “They’re going to have to put a limit” on flights, he said. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to put stoplights in the sky.”

Near the interchange of the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, where traffic overhead converges as well, about 140 people live at the Montesilla Mobile Home Park. “It’s scary, believe me,” said Vesper R. Bennett, assistant manager of the park. “We’re all senior citizens here, but still we don’t want to go that way.”

Her friend, Pauline F. Evans, said, “Sometimes they fly so low you think, ‘I hope they don’t land right over here,’ and then after the (Cerritos) accident, it makes you quiver.”

Home Restored

The Cerritos crash has remained very much on the minds of Link family members, who had to live elsewhere for 10 1/2 months while their home was restored.

“You know,” said Steve Link, 38, a representative for a medical devices manufacturer, “you always think when you are in your own home you are safe.

“The first thing I thought of were those people in that (Cerritos) neighborhood who didn’t go anywhere on the Labor Day weekend to avoid the crazies on the road. How tragic for them to be home, thinking they are safe, and a plane falls out of the sky on them.”

Neither the Links nor their first son, now 5, were home when the jet parts set the inside of their house on fire.

Kathryn Link said she sometimes worries that the next time children playing outside could be hurt.

Still, the couple has tried to look on the bright side, saying the odds against their house being hit again are small.

“But it has happened to me, and it obviously could happen again,” Steve Link said. And with the number of commercial jet flights from John Wayne scheduled to increase, that risk grows.

“I just may move,” he said, as another jet soared overhead.

“It’s such a tragedy for people to die, especially those people (in Cerritos) who were minding their own business, feeling safe in their homes.”