Compton Popular in Flight Circles : Aviation: Despite urban problems, airport is liked for absence of congestion and its proximity to industry.

At first glance, little about the desk of Compton Airport manager Richard Shaw seems different from that of any other airport official. Neat stacks of interoffice memorandums and newsletters from the American Assn. of Airport Executives hold down one corner. Piles and rows of videotapes on airport administration clutter others.

Then comes the mug.

On an upper corner of Shaw’s desk, nestled against a pin-riddled bulletin board, sits a “Compton Airport” coffee mug brimming with two years’ worth of mangled, discharged bullets.

“You know how people shoot guns on New Year’s Day and on the Fourth of July?” Shaw asks, shaking three of the spent slugs, one from a high-powered rifle, into his palm. “Well, they shoot a lot here, and the bullets have to come down somewhere. And because the airport is one of the most open spaces in this community, many of them land here. So we just go out and pick them up.”

The mug is a reminder that, although Compton Airport is in most ways typical of any other small-town airfield, it is also an airport grappling with some unusual--and sometimes frightening--burdens.

Rumors have long swirled among pilots, for instance, that gunmen sometimes use incoming planes for target practice. Although there is scant evidence of this, the fact that such reports thrive at all poses a difficulty for the airport.

Airport tenants say that local gangs have occasionally vandalized bathrooms, and at least one hangar is scarred with gang graffiti. Also, some Compton residents have accused the county-run airstrip of doing little to embrace its mostly black and Latino city.

Still, the airport remains popular in the local aviation community. Pilots note gratefully that the runways are hardly ever busy, allowing for immediate takeoffs and landings. Private businessmen leasing hangars at the airport drool at the facility’s location near many of the bustling industrial parks that dot southern Los Angeles County.

“The industry here is growing quite fast,” said Chet Duncan, the manager of Commandair, an airplane repair service housed in a hangar. “There are plenty of industrial parks with big-name companies for us to contact about business.”

Despite the growth, Compton, like many of the communities around south Los Angeles, has for years grappled with grave social problems. Street gangs range in some neighborhoods. Shootings are routine. Narcotics peddling is a growth industry for many residents.

Although Compton also sustains a number of flourishing shops and pleasant middle-class neighborhoods, its problems have led many to stereotype it as a no-man’s land. Like the city, the airport is sometimes stigmatized.

“People think that if anything happens in Compton, it’s bad,” said Shaw. “That’s not true. The community here has problems, but no more than other communities. The airport has had some incidents, but no more than any other airport.”

One of five county-run airports, the airstrip is one of the most vital to the Los Angeles Basin, which is ranked among the busiest and most complex airspaces in the world. Twenty-one airports support 6.5 million flights in the area each year, according to congressional auditors.

“The sheer size of our runways keep out the big planes,” said Shaw, strolling between a pair of Cessnas chained down on the airfield. “We’re a reliever airport. We relieve general aviation traffic from carrier airports. What would happen if you didn’t have reliever airports is that all of these planes would land at LAX.”

Shaw said the Compton Airport records 90,000 takeoffs and landings each year. By contrast, Los Angeles International Airport records some 250,000 annually.

The airport is also home for the Compton Unified School District’s aerospace education programs and for the three helicopters that make up the Compton Police Department’s air fleet. In addition, more than 350 private planes are housed at the 66-year-old airstrip, the oldest in the basin.

“There are plenty of people who enjoy using the airport,” said Jim Woods, a Los Angeles County airport commissioner who learned to fly at the Compton Airport during the 1930s and 1940s. “Compton Airport is one of our nicest airports, despite the fact that not many people realize it.”

Shaw said that, although rumors fly about people firing on moving planes, he has never heard of such an incident. Only one pilot interviewed said that his aircraft had ever been shot at.

“It was very a long time ago,” said James Wansley, a former airport employee who lives across the street from the facility. “I was coming in for a landing, and I saw this kid on the runway point at my plane. I didn’t think much of it, even after I saw a flicker on the (control panel) screen.”

When Wansley landed, he said, he noticed that the young gunman had put a slug from his .22-caliber pistol in the wing.

Even though they may not be targets, other pilots said they still come across enough bullets around the airport to make for some unsettling experiences.

“You pick them up just walking around,” said Rod Zopf, a TWA pilot who flies an aerobatic plane out of the airport. “People shoot up into the air, and the bullets sometimes land on the planes. Many of them drop out eventually.”

Reaching into the tray of a chalkboard mounted in his hangar, Zopf showed a visitor several of the shell casings he has collected over the years. Rattling them dice-like in his hand, Zopf said, “Nobody likes to see this.”

Zopf said there were disturbing incidents a few years, when gang members stole onto the airport grounds and vandalized some bathrooms.

“They broke in and started scrawling their graffiti all over,” he said. “But the Compton police put an end to it fast. They never let it become a real problem.”

The airport has also drawn criticism from some of those who live around the facility. Residents contend that the county has done little to strengthen the relationship between the airport and the community.

“They haven’t opened their arms to the community,” said Riley Johnson, a Compton Unified School District official who oversees the district’s aviation programs at the airport. “They haven’t really made an effort to get to know this community.”

Johnson said he was glad county officials permitted the district to set up the aviation program, in which students learn airplane mechanics and repair, but was disappointed in their failure to recruit local residents for jobs at the airport.

Airport officials said one Latino and no African Americans are on the airport’s eight-person staff.

Woods, the airport commissioner, agreed with Johnson, saying that certain county policies tend to keep blacks and Latinos from working in the county airport system.

“The county requires most airport employees to have a pilot’s license,” said Woods, who flew during World War II as a member of the famed all-black fighter squadron known as the Tuskegee Airmen. “Now, if you want to be an airport attendant, why should you have to have a pilot’s license? You don’t have to fly. There’s no relationship.

” . . . A lot of blacks don’t have pilot’s licenses--and shouldn’t need them for certain jobs.”

Despite the criticism, the airport thrives.

“I love this place,” said Zopf, who stores three planes at the airport. “I’ve flown out of a lot of airports, and this is one of the finest I’ve come across. There’s no wait here. At a lot of other airports, you’ll be in a long line, waiting to get up in the air. Pilots like to be in the air.”