Pleasure Flying in Urban Areas Should be Banned

As an ecologist, teaching and studying urban problems for the past 25 years, I would like to comment on our aircraft problems in Southern California. Some believe that the solution to the air collisions, crashes, and near hits lies with the air traffic controllers. Things can always be improved, but they are not the main problem. Controllers, no matter how good, will always make some mistakes. We all make mistakes. Remember to err is human!

The basic problem is too many aircraft, with more planes and helicopters being added each year. It is simply a case of the more marbles in a box, the more often they will collide.

Urban ecologists believe that all unnecessary aircraft should be prohibited from flying over populated areas, and have been saying this before our recent accidents.

Pleasure planes, private and corporate planes and helicopters, and military craft should be excluded because their operation benefits only a few while causing noise impacts and threats to all, even children playing in their formerly safe backyards and senior citizens asleep in back bedrooms.

The noise intrusions and the shadow of threat to life and property that non-essential aircraft cast over cities are unacceptable. Individual rights in this country only extend until they interfere with someone else’s rights. Our freedom to do as we please is reduced with the addition of people or planes. Individual freedom must often be forfeited for the common good.

In the 1940s, for example, farmers in “Dairy Valley” used to hunt ducks on their properties and along the local creeks. Today, a shotgun-toting nimrod looking for ducks in what is now Cerritos, La Palma, and Cypress would probably attract a SWAT police team. Hunting is too dangerous and disruptive in populated areas. Local duck hunters must now travel long distances at great expense under numerous restrictions to ply their sport.

So too, aircraft numbers and operations must be restricted, something the Federal Aviation Administration has been reluctant to do. Limitation is the mother of good management! The FAA needs to start now to phase out the operation of unnecessary aircraft in an overpopulated areas.

It could start by putting a freeze on additional private and business craft. The training of new private pilots over cities must cease. Existing pilots and planes should be upgraded for maximum safety. Full-sized underwing ID numbers should be mandatory. Preflight checks, paid for by the pilots, should be required for every flight.

The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants pilots can retire or move to unpopulated areas of the country. We cannot tolerate any more duck hunting over our cities, because we are all “sitting ducks”.

RICHARD J. VOGL

Professor of Biology

California State University

Los Angeles