Skytyper Pilots Get Safety Message From U.S.

Winds were light as the five aging airplanes flew abreast high above Long Beach, leaving behind giant, fleecy words that hung in the sky for a fleeting minute before dissipating on the breeze.

“NEWS 13” was the airborne message left by the veteran pilots of Skytypers Inc., their vaporous, perfectly formed letters each as tall as the Empire State Building.

It was another routine advertising mission for the colorful Skytypers, who have made appearances in numerous movies and television commercials and have, without incident, created puffy “billboards” for dozens of advertisers throughout Southern California for 21 years.

But federal officials considered this Skytypers flight over Long Beach on Aug. 9, 1985, hardly routine. Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board grounded four of the company’s pilots, including its president and formation leader, Gregory Stinis, for straying without permission into the restricted airspace that extends southward from Los Angeles International Airport.

After forming three NEWS 13 advertisements over Long Beach for Los Angeles television station KCOP, the Skytypers’ World War II-era aircraft clipped a corner of the Los Angeles “terminal control area” as they prepared to land at Long Beach Municipal Airport, the safety board found. And seconds after descending out of the control area, they flew within 500 feet of a passenger plane departing from LAX, an administrative law judge from the safety board ruled.

Judge Jerrell R. Davis upheld a Federal Aviation Administration decision to suspend the commercial pilots’ licenses of Stinis and the three others, but reduced the 45-day suspensions the FAA had recommended for each of them. Stinis will be grounded for 15 days beginning Feb. 10, while the other three pilots--each of whom have been flying since World War II--are to surrender their licenses for 30 days.

The fifth pilot in the Skytypers’ formation of vintage single-engine planes was not cited because the FAA misplaced certain documents in its investigation, authorities said.

Davis described the violations as “slight and short-lived,” noting that there was never any actual danger to passengers aboard a Sun Aire (now Sky West) flight because its two pilots and the five Skytypers had already spotted each other. The V-shaped formation passed over Sun Aire’s 20-passenger Swearingen Metroliner by no more than 500 feet, the airline pilots testified during an NTSB hearing last week.

The Skytypers fliers estimated that the margin between them and the twin-engine Metroliner was at least 1,000 feet. They also argued that despite FAA radar records, their formation never entered the terminal control area--a massive chunk of airspace shaped roughly like an inverted wedding cake with Los Angeles International at its center--but had merely flown over it.

“The radar records are inaccurate,” insisted Paul A. LeVars, 66, a retired engineer and former Navy combat pilot who has been flying on weekends for Skytypers since 1971. “Collectively, we have more than 200 years of flying experience between us. I think we know by now where the (terminal control area) begins and ends.

“I think the FAA should be using taxpayers’ money to promote safety, rather than trying to get pilots’ scalps on their belt,” he said after the hearing.

The judge, however, dismissed the Skytypers’ contention that FAA radar had somehow malfunctioned that day. Agency officials have conceded that their radar equipment does periodically break down but say that some of the more critical components are being modernized.

“If these (radar) readouts are as off as you say, God help us all,” Davis told the pilots.

The case against Skytypers is considered among the more unusual enforcement actions undertaken in recent years by the FAA.

Agency officials in late 1986 announced that they were cracking down on pilots who violate the Los Angeles airport control area in the wake of the Aug. 31 midair collision over Cerritos. In that incident, a private plane entered the control area without permission and collided with a descending Aeromexico DC-9. Eighty-two people died.

Since then, the FAA has initiated dozens of cases against individual pilots suspected of entering the control area without required prior permission from air traffic controllers. While the action against Skytypers was initiated well before the Cerritos disaster, agency officials said they could not remember when a veritable squadron of fliers had been cited at one time for violating the terminal control area.

It also marked the first time that a Skytypers pilot had ever been cited by the FAA for breaking any aviation regulation, according to Stinis, the company president.

In 1949, Stinis’ father invented the process by which the Skytypers’ planes emit synchronized puffs of vapor that form 1,260-foot-high letters which appear as typed advertisements in the sky for beer companies, department stores, radio stations and other clients.

The battleship-gray planes with their red-white-and blue-striped wings were rented by Paramount Pictures to appear in the television miniseries “The Winds of War.” The Skytypers also formed a “WELCOME” sign and interlocking rings above the opening ceremonies for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.