Crowding, Costs Send Private Flying Into Tailspin

‘It’s much more dangerous than before. It’s purely a miracle there aren’t more accidents.’

Gary Proctor,Orange County Airport commissioner

In the good old days of Orange County aviation, a private pilot had only to don his leather helmet and goggles and set out into the sky from any of the more than two dozen airstrips among the sprawling orange and avocado groves.

In those freewheeling days before World War II, the pilots’ only real concern was choosing an airstrip that was not surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees that protected tender crops from Santa Ana winds.

Today’s private pilot, by contrast, faces a dizzying array of problems when trying to fly in Orange County.

First, he must find an airfield, which is no easy feat because all but three of the civilian airstrips have closed--and one of those faces imminent closure.

Then he must find room to fly. While pre-World War II pilots were free to roam at will throughout the Orange County sky--barnstorming in biplanes to the amusement of spectators gathered below--their 1980s counterparts confront freeway-like aerial congestion that severely confines their movement. As a result, pilots say, few have time anymore to enjoy the thrill of flying.

Watching for Other Planes

“You’re too busy watching out for other aircraft,” said longtime Fullerton pilot Bob McNutt.

So many private planes have crowded into the skies, during the past 20 years, especially, that almost all of today’s flying is for business purposes rather than recreational, said Tim Merwin, aviation program manager for the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

The overcrowding and airport shortage, along with increasing costs and stifling airspace restrictions, are combining to drive private pilots to the less populated fringes of the Southland and, increasingly, out of the sky altogether, Merwin said.

General aviation’s decline is reflected in Federal Aviation Administration and private statistics, which show:

- A decrease in flights at John Wayne Airport--the nation’s fifth busiest in terms of commercial and private aviation--from 631,000 in 1979 to 552,000 in 1986.

- A similar decline at Fullerton Municipal Airport, from 250,000 flights in 1979 to 173,000 in 1986.

- And a nationwide decline over the past decade in the number of private pilots, from 800,000 to 700,000, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn.

General aviation encompasses everything from private planes to corporate and charter jets. The decline in general aviation is concentrated among the private pilots, who aviation officials say make up the bulk of non-commercial air traffic.

FAA officials said that while general aviation flights have been decreasing, the skies remain crowded because commercial flights have steadily increased under deregulation. At John Wayne Airport, for example, officials say commercial flights have more than doubled from 41 per day to 86 per day in just the past two years. However, private planes account for the bulk of flight operations at the airport.

In addition, corporate jet traffic has also increased substantially at John Wayne. Whereas 10 years ago two or three corporate jets were based at the airport, today there are 20 to 25, said Jack Cummins, line service manager for the airport’s Martin Aviation Co.

Besides being crowded out, private pilots are also being priced out.

In the past decade, the price of fuel has risen from less than $1 per gallon to as high as $2. Although automobile gasoline prices rose and then fell during the same period, Cummins said aviation fuel prices have remained high because there is a limited market and because it has required expensive new additives.

New planes have tripled in price, from $30,000 a decade ago to more than $100,000 today. Much of that increase is because of manufacturers’ higher liability premiums, said Henry Ogrodzinski, spokesman for the General Aviation Manufacturers Assn. in Washington.

The high cost has practically dried up the market for new planes, Ogrodzinski said. The industry last year sold a mere 1,085 new private planes, contrasted with 17,811 planes sold in the banner year of 1978.

Pilots also are paying more for parking space. At John Wayne Airport, for example, the county’s tie-down rate is nearly doubling, from $58 per month at the beginning of this year to $101 by the beginning of 1989.

Frustrated with the rising costs at both John Wayne and Fullerton, a number of private pilots have moved their planes to smaller, outlying facilities, such as Chino Airport in San Bernardino County.

One such pilot, Chris MacDonald, 37, said he would rather commute the 28 miles from his home in Costa Mesa than put up with the aggravation of flying out of John Wayne only three miles away. MacDonald, who uses a World War II-vintage biplane for his sightseeing business, left John Wayne for Chino in 1986.

Couldn’t Be Competitive

“It got to the point that the overcrowding, the expense and the fuel costs made it impossible for me to be competitive as far as what I could charge customers,” MacDonald said.

At John Wayne Airport, MacDonald was paying $350 a month for hangar space, compared to $150 at Chino Airport. The fuel costs, he said, also are much lower: $1.50 a gallon at Chino versus $1.95 at John Wayne.

Dave McCoy, 46, said he and his wife, Roxanne, last fall uprooted their real estate sales company at Fullerton Airport, from where they commuted on business, to the less expensive Chino Airport. Dave McCoy said the motivating factor was an increase in the couple’s hangar rent from $427 to $595 a month. They now pay $130 a month at Chino.

“Plus we’ve got a bathroom, showers, water and automatic electric doors” in the new hangar, Dave McCoy said. “Other than the cow smell, it’s OK.”

But for Orange County pilots unwilling to move or commute past cow pastures to rural airports, parking space is a serious problem.

The state Department of Transportation’s division of aeronautics says two more general aviation airports are urgently needed in Orange County, one in the south and one to replace Meadowlark in Huntington Beach. The owner of Meadowlark received city approval last month to redevelop his 65-acre site with homes and commercial businesses. When that airport closes--possibly later this year--the owners of 150 planes must move.

That will be no easy task, because the county has only two other civilian airports: John Wayne, which is at capacity with 900 private planes and a 10-year waiting list for tie-down spaces, and Fullerton Municipal, which is at capacity with 600 planes and a three-month waiting list.

During the first half of this century, there were 27 flying fields in Orange County, according to local aviation historian Vi Smith. But urban encroachment closed almost all of them.

The last airfield to close was in 1977 in San Juan Capistrano, where a plane crash killed a 5-year-old girl playing in a dirt culvert. A public outcry followed, and the City Council closed the airport, ending years of controversy over its existence.

Meadowlark has also been the subject of controversy for years between pilots and neighbors concerned about safety and noise. One airport opponent, Edward Ramaekers, 59, whose family lives directly under the airport’s departure path, said noise is a distraction, as is the constant worry that a plane will crash into his home.

“They come real low over the apartment houses in front of us,” Ramaekers said. “I’ll be glad to see it (the airport) gone.”

Ten planes have crashed at or near the airport since 1981, including one last year in which the two occupants were killed. No one on the ground was reported killed or injured in those crashes.

Some residents, such as Mark Browning, 37, a teacher, find the airport’s safety record comforting and don’t want it closed.

“It’s a nice open space, and with the lack of space in Huntington Beach, it seemed like a valuable resource,” Browning said.

Safety has become a major concern over the operation of local airports. McNutt, president of the Fullerton Airport Pilots Assn., traces the increased worry to the Aug. 31, 1986, midair collision over Cerritos of an Aeromexico jetliner and a private plane. Eighty-two people died in that crash, including 15 on the ground.

“There’s more fear of airplanes falling down out of the sky on them,” McNutt said.

But McNutt said that none of the 29 airplane accidents at or near Fullerton Airport in the past three decades has injured a bystander. But 19 pilots and passengers have been killed and 19 others injured, he said.

Fear of crashes also is acute among residents near John Wayne Airport, where private planes vie for airspace with helicopters and commercial flights. But John Wayne Airport Manager George A. Rebella said the mix of commercial and private planes is safe.

“The public feels we shouldn’t have (that) mix, but it has worked well at John Wayne Airport,” Rebella said.

General aviation pilots complain that they are being squeezed out of the airport to accommodate more commercial and business jet traffic. As evidence, they cite the near-doubling of their tie-down fees and their recent relocation to a smaller, less-accessible side of the airport.

The planes were moved in December from the north side of the airport to the west side to accommodate construction that has begun for John Wayne’s $297-million improvement project. Rebella denied that the airport is trying to drive out general aviation.

Another problem stifling general aviation is the latticework of airspace regulations that have been imposed over the Los Angeles basin in the past two years.

After the Cerritos crash, and a record 51 near-collisions in 12 months over the Los Angeles basin, the FAA in August expanded the restricted Terminal Control Area surrounding Los Angeles International Airport.

Private pilots must request permission from air traffic controllers before entering the TCA, and their planes must be equipped with special altitude-reporting transmitters. The FAA, additionally, closed a popular shoreline corridor for aircraft flying under visual flight rules.

Both actions infuriated general aviation pilots, who complained that the FAA was singling them out for persecution because of the actions of the one private pilot who collided with the Aeromexico jetliner. Martin Aviation’s Cummins said pilots believed, moreover, that the saturated media coverage of air traffic safety after the crash created heavy public pressure for a crackdown on private pilots.

Pilots have also complained about the FAA’s decision last year to institute Airport Radar Services Areas around airports in Ontario, Burbank, El Toro and March Air Force base, southeast of Riverside.

While those radar areas are not as restrictive as TCAs, pilots must get permission from air traffic controllers to enter. But controllers, pilots say, often are so busy that they put private planes into dangerously compressed holding patterns. Many pilots, consequently, say they now are afraid to fly across the Los Angeles basin.

“It’s much more dangerous than before,” said Gary Proctor, a private pilot and member of the Orange County Airport Commission. “It’s purely a miracle there aren’t more accidents.”

H. C. (Mac) McClure, the FAA’s western Pacific director in Hawthorne, said the new restrictions are designed to improve air safety, not detract from it.

“They’re there because the traffic is there,” McClure said.

The FAA, he said, is studying ways to simplify the airspace rules for pilots. In the meantime, the FAA on Thursday opened three new flying routes to help private pilots cross Los Angeles County.

The FAA is also conducting education programs for private pilots, said Jack Norris, the FAA’s regional accident prevention coordinator. Norris said he agreed with pilots attending a recent session that aviation was a lot simpler in, say, 1950. But he added that the same also holds true for automobile traffic.

“It’s just tough for everybody,” Norris said.

There is no easy solution to the other problems confronting general aviation.

Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, a former Marine Corps general and outspoken aviation proponent, said he has about given up on the idea of a new general aviation airport in Orange County.

Fullerton Airport manager Rod Murphy said, “No one wants it in their back yard.”

Riley said he is pegging his hopes on a new airport for commercial flights. He ruled out possible joint use of the three military air bases in the county, saying the Pentagon almost certainly would veto such a plan.

The effort to find a site for a new airport for private and commercial pilots was undertaken last year by the Airport Site Coalition, a consortium of business, government and aviation interests.

Help May Be on Way

A problem, Merwin said, is that the coalition doesn’t have enough money to conduct studies. But a bill in the state Senate would allot $100 million for site selection studies, as well as other airport necessities, including runway improvements and airport expansion, Merwin said.

No matter what happens, most observers say general aviation’s continuing slide in Orange County is irreversible.

“Unless another airport is developed, we’re going to see more and more the demise of the small airplane and the private pilot,” airport commissioner Proctor said. “It’s sad, though. It really is.”

ORANGE COUNTY AIRPORTS PAST AND PRESENT

Airports listed in bold (*) are presently in operation. 1. Brea 2. Atwood 3. *Fullerton Municipal Airport 4. Anaheim Airport 5. Cypress 6. Anaheim Heliport 7. Haster Field 8. Stanton 9. *Los Alamitos Naval Air Station 10. Seal Beach 11. *Meadowlark Airport 12. Midway City Airport 13. Post Brothers 14. Santa Ana 15. Mile Square Airfield 16. Huntington Beach 17. Costa Mesa 18. Newport Heliport 19. Santa Ana Army Air Base (auxiliary field) 20. *John Wayne Airport 21. Eddie Martin Airport 22. *Tustin Marine Corps Air Station 23. *El Toro Marine Corps Air Station 24. Pancho Barnes 25. Graham Brothers 26. Joe Skidmore 27. San Juan Capistrano Airport

Source: Vi Smith, “From Jennings to Jets”