Pleasure Flying in Urban Areas

I was very impressed when I read Vogl’s letter about banning pleasure flying in urban areas. His credentials and ability to take a premise through to a logical conclusion are the ingredients that formulate much of the public opinion in a society thirsting for simple solutions.

However, I must raise a question. Whose pleasure flying are we going to ban--those revelers and tourists returning from Hawaii or Mexico, or the guy taking a friend to brunch in Santa Barbara or Apple Valley?

If “individual freedoms must often be forfeited for the common good” then the statistics that consistently show 40,000-plus highway fatalities (half due to drunk driving) far outweigh the aviation fatality numbers.

I submit that we should ban private planes and leave the airways to the commercial carriers right after we ban private autos and leave the highways to buses and trucks.

HUGH A. BARNWELL

Hawthorne